Andrus Ansip,
the Prime Minister of Estonia –

Dear readers,

There exist very clear digital borders between countries in our otherwise borderless world. This is so even in Europe, where we aim for a digital single market.

People and companies move between countries freely. Yet, their data and the e-services they enjoy at home do not move along as seamlessly.

For example, people have to take each year 20,000 paper documents in-person across the bay from the Estonian social insurance agency to the Finnish one. At the same time, plenty of technology exists to make this process electronic and automatic which would make the service much better for citizens of both countries.

Estonia has relied on a system called X-Road for over 10 years to link together our governmental information systems, meaning data and services. Based on the good experience, we propose the use of similar data exchange environment across national borders. Even our X-Road technology itself can be used internationally, and we are ready to give it to partner countries for use.

In other words, it’s time to start creating actual cross-border services. The first step should be to link up administrations by linking their information systems.

In this way we can get data flowing across borders. Then common services can follow and not just public sector ones. Administration-to-administration linkages will lead the way to breaking down digital borders in private services as well.

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