Finland’s Suomi.fi digital government service platform will soon be ready to test federation of its single sign-on eID solution with similarly eIDAS-compliant eID services in other European Union member states. Tests will take place towards the end of the year, said Jani Ruuskanen, a project manager involved in developing the Suomi.fi services.

The eSuomi eID solution lets users access all digital public services available in Finland. “We will soon be ready for the eIDAS federation,” said Mr Ruuskanen, who works at Finland’s Population Register Centre. In adopting the eIDAS regulation, European countries in 2014 agreed to make their eID solutions interoperable, to make it easier for citizens to access digital public services across borders.

The Suomi.fi platform is built by reusing and extending Estonia’s X-road data exchange system. Finland and Estonia have been developing X-Road together since 2014. In November last year, the two started the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS), a non-profit to further develop the X-road solution, with both countries paying an equal membership fee.

The developers are gradually adding new services to the platform. According to Ruuskanen, public services can for example now test services including changing of a citizens’ address, registration of births, deaths, and finding tax information.

Use of the Suomi.fi platform is mandatory for Finnish public services. Many of the services can also be used, for free, by companies and non-governmental organisations.

In Finland, the system is set up to use the Core Public Service Vocabulary Application Profile (CPSV-AP). This is a standardised way to describe government services, and using it makes it easier to discover and use similar services in other countries. (CPSV-AP is being developed by the ISA²​ Programme, which also manages the Joinup portal for eGovernment professionals.)

More information:

Presentation by Jani Ruuskanen (Youtube)
Presentation by Jani Ruuskanen (PDF)