Secure data interoperability between sectors

The project is funded from the public sector innovation fund of the Government Office of Estonia. The long-term goal of the project is to develop better data services, reduce the amount of data collected, and support innovation both in the private and public sector.

The great potential of the Estonian data economy is hampered by the lack of secure and flexible solutions for the efficient exchange of data between sectors. At the moment, data collected by various parties cannot be linked in a way that would ensure data confidentiality. For this reason, Statistics Estonia is going to test privacy enhancing technologies (PET) that would allow parties to share confidential data (e.g. personal data) without other parties actually seeing the data. Privacy enhancing technologies enable the processing of different parties’ data without any disclosure of personal data.

Project goals

• Support the development of the data economy and reduce the amount of data collected.
• Create a framework for data interoperability between sectors.
• Build the framework by incorporating secure and innovative solutions, such as privacy enhancing technologies.
• Support the development of services in both the public and private sector based on new data sources and better data.

Pilot project: how to increase sustainability and convenience in the transport system?

Statistics Estonia will test the framework in a pilot project together with the Transport Administration and other partners. In the pilot project, privacy enhancing technologies will be used to link mobility data and selected demographic characteristics. 

The linking of demographic and mobility data will provide an in-depth overview of mobility trends and the needs of different demographic groups. This would allow developing road maintenance, public transport and mobility services based on the habits and preferences of specific demographic groups. Currently available data do not allow the identification of the needs of all demographic groups, which means that some needs cannot be taken into account in transport planning.

The pilot project can be considered successful if data linking provides new information that helps the Transport Administration to build a more sustainable transport system that better recognises different needs. This would significantly reduce the need to fill in lengthy mobility diaries.

Privacy enhancing technologies support innovation

In the final stage of the project, Statistics Estonia will analyse possibilities for implementing the solution in other domains. Should that be possible, it would mean a decreased burden for both the private and public sector in terms of data collection and sharing. It would also create new opportunities for offering valuable services to the public, using these new data sources.

Project stages

1. Developing the methodological, technical and legal framework for data interoperability between sectors.
2. Testing the framework in a pilot project that integrates mobility data and demographic data. 
3. Analysing the scalability and cost-effectiveness of the framework. 

Statistics Estonia’s aim is to increase the availability and quality of statistics by introducing data held by the private sector. These data would allow, for example, the production of seasonal population statistics, which is not possible now using available data sources. The mobility data that are used in the pilot project would also allow Statistics Estonia to assess the quality of the data on place of residence which are essential for population statistics.

If the project has a positive outcome, a proposal will be made for the creation of a secure data interoperability service – this would support the development of the data economy in Estonia and promote more efficient data interoperability between sectors.

Innovation fund project

• Project duration: 24 months
• Project budget: 1.1 million euros
• Project owner: Statistics Estonia
• Project partners: Transport Administration, Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, Data Protection Inspectorate
• Project manager: Krislin Kivi (krislin.kivi [at] stat.ee (krislin[dot]kivi[at]stat[dot]ee))

Public sector innovation fund

The public sector innovation fund was created to support the identification, development and real-life testing of innovative solutions. The innovation fund is administered by the Government Office of Estonia, and its activities and projects are funded under the European Union Cohesion Policy 2021–2027 measure “Development of innovation capacities in the public sector”.

For more information about the innovation fund, see the website of the Government Office (only in Estonian).