Submission + - Estonia sharing its ID-card based eGovernment solution with Finland
paavo512 writes: For the last decade or so, Estonia has developed a national electronic data exchange layer called X-Road. Is is based on national electronic ID cards and allows creation of common electronic services like founding a company, declaring taxes or e-voting. Every day, over 800,000 enquiries are made via X-Road (the population of Estonia is 1.3M). According to the PM of Estonia, the solution is saving 2% of national GDP annually.
The Estonian ID card technology was originally imported from Finland; however, it appears Finns have for 10 years failed to come up with any significant e-services making use of them. So it is now agreed that Estonian X-Road solution would be expanding to Finland as well. From the article:
The Estonian ID card technology was originally imported from Finland; however, it appears Finns have for 10 years failed to come up with any significant e-services making use of them. So it is now agreed that Estonian X-Road solution would be expanding to Finland as well. From the article:
Sharing and joint development of X-Road solution is prescribed by cooperation memorandum, signed [on Dec 10] by Estonian and Finnish prime ministers. To our knowledge, this was the first international agreement in the world which was signed digitally.
