Iceland has signed a partnership agreement with the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS). Iceland is the first partner of NIIS and the parties aim to deepen the cooperation towards a membership of Iceland in the future.

Iceland is currently implementing X-Road data exchange layer which is nowadays developed by NIIS. The X-Road data exchange layer enables secure data exchange within a country, but also as an X-Road federation between the countries which have implemented their own X-Road environments.

"We are happy to get Iceland join the Nordic X-Road family and NIIS, as a partner country first and hopefully as a full member in the future. We look forward to cooperate also with other Nordic and EU countries. It is beneficial for the countries to develop a common platform for data exchange, to enable data exchange between the countries, and finally to provide private companies with new business opportunities through services connected via the platform", explains Ville Sirviö, the CEO of NIIS.

"In Iceland, there is a huge focus on increasing and improving online public service. Iceland is prepared to meet those challenges and exploiting the opportunities inherent in ever-increasing technological change. Implementation of X-Road is a major milestone in our roadmap and it will play key role in our IT infrastructure", says Einar Birkir Einarsson, Head of Division from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Iceland.

X-Road, the data exchange layer for information systems, is a technological and organizational environment enabling a secure Internet-based data exchange between information systems. The X-Road technology is already used nationwide in the Estonian X-tee and in the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer service.