One goal of the program is to establish trust services across borders in the Nordic region. One such program which is under way is an API gateway which system vendors and service providers can integrate into their systems and services. Customers can then look up business partners cross borders and get verified registration information.
Exchanging information cross borders
The Brønnøysund Register Centre in cooperation with the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency have developed a working proof of concept (PoC) for such a service within the framework of solution area D (SA-D) – Reliability and Data Quality.
Read the solution area D (SA-D) – Reliability and Data Quality
The PoC is a live gateway demonstrating access to Norwegian information from business registers and access to Finnish information on companies provided in an open API by the Finnish Patent and Registration Office. In the very near future, information from other countries will also be accessible through the national gateway when it has been made available.
The importance of a semantic model
In a cross Nordic project like this a great emphasis is on creating a common semantic model between the countries to ensure that accurate, comparable, and reliable information can be retrieved.
“The PoC is in line with the semantics and the API description agreed between the Nordic countries in NSG&B. The PoC is only available in a graphical interface so far but shows the accessible information both in a human readable format and how the API is provided. The information may be provided in an open API. The gateway will be extended to include more information from more Nordic countries when it is available.” – Håkon Olderbakk national team lead Norway.
The value and ways forward
Feedback from various stakeholders confirms that access to national and Nordic information about businesses would be beneficial. The service would be of value for various actors in both the public and private sector dealing with businesses in the Nordics.
Torbjörn Ull, project manager for Nordic Smart Government & Business
“Through dialogue with various stakeholders, we have gained a greater knowledge of what additional information would be beneficial to exchange on a Nordic level. Some of the areas mentioned are e.g. signatory rights, ownership and VAT information. This information would be beneficial for the development of the Nordic companies in various ways and build trust. SA-D is currently investigating the possibilities to share this information but still take into account the various national legislations and the upcoming EU regulations.” -Says Torbjörn Ull, project manager in solution area SA-D – Reliability and quality data