X-Road® is open-source software and ecosystem solution that provides unified and secure data exchange between organisations. In Europe, X-Road is used as the national data exchange platform in Estonia, Finland, and Iceland. In total, X-Road has been implemented in over 20 countries worldwide.
X-Road comes with its own organisational and governance models, and therefore, it's not only about technology and technical connectivity. Instead, X-Road connects to all the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) layers. When it comes to X-Road’s relationship with the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA), X-Road can be considered as a Solution Building Block (SBB) that implements the “Data Exchange Component“ Architecture Building Block (ABB).
X-Road is developed by Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS), a non-profit association with the mission to ensure the development and strategic management of X-Road® and other cross-border solutions for digital government infrastructure. The republics of Estonia, Finland, and Iceland are members of NIIS.
NIIS has created X-Road Academy to support X-Road users, which consists of a series of self-learning online courses. The courses correlate with the recommendation of EIF4SCC to pursue standardisation at the process level and allocate the resources to maintain these process standards.
X-Road Academy provides online training for developers, users, operators, consultants, service providers, and anyone willing to learn more about X-Road. The courses are organised around different user roles, and currently, there are five separate courses available:
- X-Road Fundamentals – Overview of X-Road; no prior X-Road experience is required for completing the course.
- X-Road Security Server Administrator – Targeted for Security Server administrators.
- X-Road Central Server Administrator – Targeted for Central Server administrators.
- X-Road Service Developer – Targeted for developers working with X-Road service integrations.
- X-Road Core Developer – Targeted for developers working with the X-Road core software development.
X-Road Fundamentals is the starting point of the X-Road learning path, and it doesn't require any prior X-Road knowledge. It’s recommended to complete the X-Road Fundamentals course before completing the other courses.
Each course consists of multiple chapters, and once they’ve been completed, there's an exam to test the participant’s X-Road knowledge. The participant will need to achieve a mark of 80% to complete the course and receive a certificate. The courses do not include any country-specific information, making them suitable for X-Road users from different countries.
All the courses are free, but registration to the training platform is required. NIIS continues to develop X-Road Academy, and new courses will be added in the future. Also, the existing courses are continuously updated since the X-Road software is actively developed all the time. The aim is to keep the training material up-to-date and aligned with the latest X-Road software version.
