The two countries' Ministries of Economic Affairs believed that in order to ensure the most effective cooperation, it was appropriate to establish an internattonal nonprofit association to ensure quality, sustainability and international interoperabillity of the central components of the basic infrastructure of services, or e-government, their prompt development, strategic management, development with optimal costs and functioning international cooperation, spokespeople for the government said.

Although the joint development will initially begin based on Estonia's X-Road, the possibility has been taken into consideration to add other central components of the basic infrastructure of services to the scope of the association's activities in the future.

The Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) and the Finnish Population Register Center signed an agreement at the end of September to connect the Estonian data exchange layer X-Road and its Finnish analogue Palveluväylä by next April at the latest.

This step will create the foundation for data exchanges between the national datasets of Estonia and Finland, the RIA said. According to RIA's regional manager Heiko Väinsalu, secure and smooth exchange of data will facilitate the provision of e-services to citizens of both countries.