A digital Finland is built on secure data exchange

Although the basic technology for the national Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer could be copied from Estonia, there was still a great need for definition and development to tailor the model to match Finnish societal and IT infrastructure needs. As an X-Road specialist, Gofore was involved in the development work right from the early stages. Gofore has implemented several valuable assets for X-Road that the Finnish Digital Agency and NIIS have then developed further.

“Our collaboration has evolved into a model where we define a need, and Gofore provides us with experienced developers, project managers, and other experts as our development partner”, Finnish Digital Agency’s Chief Specialist Anssi Ahlberg says.

In 2020 and 2021 the Finnish Digital Agency commissioned Gofore to conduct service design that outlined several development targets in the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer.

“We gained valuable insight into, for example, the challenges within the implementation of the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer. We have then focused on solving these issues for the last couple of years”, Ahlberg says.

The data exchange layer keeps the Finnish society’s digital wheels spinning. It helps the Finnish Digital Agency succeed in their mission to promote digitalization, secure data availability, and provide services for their customers’ different life events.

A telltale sign of the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer’s success is its growing popularity in Finland. Thanks to the Finnish Data Agency’s, NIIS’s, and Gofore’s development work in recent years, the X-Road technology that the layer is built on has attracted increasing global attention.

“We’ve succeeded in developing our solution into an attractive option for data exchange. It is currently spreading on an open-source license both in Finland and abroad noticeably faster than before”, Ahlberg says.

The Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer was Gofore’s first major project with the Finnish Digital Agency. The smooth and close-knit collaboration has since expanded into other areas.

“Gofore provides a wide range of architecture services, software and application development, digital security services, service and user interface design, and executive advisory and consultation services for the Finnish Digital Agency”, Gofore’s Public Sector Head of Sales Ville Suvanto says.