Web conference notes, 2021.08.05 (Joint Working Group)

Web Conference

Joint MDS Working Group

• Every week call at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 6pm CET

Conference Call Info

Meeting ID: 841 7098 9462 - Passcode 612987
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84170989462?pwd=WTRlY25wOVhNeS8wQk1iM2QzYkQvUT09

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Attendees

Note: We are now collecting attendees upon entry into the Zoom meeting. An attendee count will be posted here after the meeting:

15 Attendees

Agenda

Main Topics

• Provider Vehicles - Beta 0.4.1 - Feedback #637
  • Final review to move Provider /vehicles out of beta for MDS 1.2.0 release
  • See PR #665
  • Decide which states should be applicable - see comment
  • Decide on duration that vehicles should stay in feed - see comment

WGSC Meeting Organizers

• Host: Michael Schnuerle
• Facilitator: Steve Brining
• Outreach: Michael Schnuerle
• Note taker: Marie Maxham

Minutes

Action Items

Vehicle updates (DONE)

1. Include all states in vehicles
2. For elsewhere/removed, persist in feed for only 90 minutes
3. Add guidance:
   • Agencies need to make sure to filter out states that are not in the PROW if they are doing vehicle counts
   • Use status_changes for historic data and as the ultimate source of truth vs /vehicles

Events Usage (DONE)

1. New issue: Should /events be removed since /status_changes and /vehicles now cover the same data ranges? Who is using /events now?
   • Bird is sending it, Vianova/Populus are consuming it
   • Related: does adding a vehicle filter back into /events help make it more useful?

Notes

Overall topic: moving /vehicles out of Beta

• Michael: Reviewed PR with some new verbiage around jurisdictional boundaries vs PROW Changing what vehicles in which states are included (broadly whether "all states" or "some states" are included)

• Ben: What is the relationship between /vehicles and /status_changes? Should be aligned. Keeping all vehicles indefinitely is too complex.

• Michael: GBFS-Private might look a lot like Provider Vehicles, with additional data for regulation. More of a side note

• Matt Davis: Other states are useful for continuity; vanishing from the feed is less useful, can't distinguish intentional departure from PROW vs. glitch or something. Status-changes is not realtime so somewhat less useful. status-changes is the historical record, not R/T.

• Alex Demisch: Unknown is useful but not sure how much per-Provider variability we'll see

• Ben H: Probably need to go deeper on Unknown and what it means in a future all day discussion.

• Matt D: Seems like operators are being genuine with their "unknown" messages, and usually the vehicle reappears at the same location when comms return.

• Ben: worried that cities using it for fleet-counting will not filter by prow/not-prow/other

• Michael: are cities doing fleet counting with /vehicles?

• Josh: Some. status-changes should be considered canonical for permit enforcement.

• Alex: We (SF) use it for investigative purposes eg. duration violations. Fleet-counting with status-changes is harder.

• So a few other use cases besides fleet counting.

• Matt D: Having definite "removed" state means we can close out vehicle-overstay events

• Ben: Elsewhere is probably the hardest to track because of having to watch the GPS trail. Vs. "removed" is easy.

• Michael: Maybe we could drop "elsewhere" because it's harder to track? Does it have sufficient utility+simplicity?

• Ben: If Vehicles is easier to consume than Status-changes, then we should keep them as similar in utility as possible, but it seems potentially difficult to keep them in alignment which can cause erosion of trust if counts come back differently.

Non PROW Timing

• Michael: how long should records persist in Vehicles for non-PROW states?

• Ben: We don't leave vehicles in Unknown

• Josh: Same

• Ben: It's tied to how often people are hitting the endpoint. If checking every 30m, then 1h would be right.

• Matt: we poll every minute

• Sebastian: same, every minute

• Michael: Sounds like 1h would work

• Ben: Sample filtering code might be useful, Python, JS, JQL.

• Michael: a sentence clarifying it could be just as useful, so let's go with that

• Some cities have daily at-a-certain-time distribution checks; Vehicles will be so much easier than status-changes

Future Looking Topics

• Should we bring back getting status_changes for a single vehicle? We dropped it because wasn't being used but maybe it should come back?

• Michael: Are people using /events?

• Sebastien: Yes, but just hitting it, not sure if team is using the data

• Matt: Events isn't used much, Vehicles is much easier

• Michael: Maybe we'll remove Events in the next major release.

Decision

• Let's go 90m instead of 60m for non PROW states, and include all states

OMF Announcements

• Additional-Modes discussion is still ongoing; deep dive on a staff framework in 2wk; this is groundwork for 2.0

• Next Weds is Board meeting, one topic is merging City and Provider WG. Charter done, WGSC sussed, would update links/mailing lists

New Attendees

N/A