Hillsborough Metropolitan Planning Organization Pilot of the Data Business Plan for State and Local Departments of Transportation: Data Business Plan

Chapter 5. Implementation Plan

Implementation is not a one-time event, but rather the policies, standards, and procedures identified in the DBP should become part of the day-to-day business practices of Mobility Data Task Force member agencies. The Task Force is responsible for addressing the improvement items (identified in Section 3). Discussions at meetings should include reports on implementation progress (e.g., tasks competed, tasks remaining) and any adjustments needed due to changing priorities, policies, standards, or legislative priorities. In addition, Hillsborough MPO should provide an annual report or briefing to senior management that provides an executive level summary of regional mobility data systems, status of integrating the data systems into the MPO’s Multimodal Transportation Database, successes achieved, new enhancements needed for existing data systems, and recommendations for addressing those issues.

The DBP implementation can ideally be started at a small scale initially. After the stakeholders and users understand and experience its benefits, the DBP can be expanded later on. This section provides a proposed roadmap to implement this DBP, with one set of actions centered on regional collaboration and another focused on internal use within Hillsborough MPO.

Regional Implementation Plan

Step 1: Execute a Memorandum of Understanding

Execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to engage regional stakeholder agencies in the DBP implementation process. The purpose of the MOU is to obtain agreement from leadership for their agencies’ involvement in the DBP process so that the effort can move forward. This top-down agreement can make DBP implementation significantly more successful. An example Memorandum of Understanding is provided in appendix K.

Step 2: Obtain Regional Coordination and Buy In

1. Determine which stakeholders are willing to engage in a data sharing agreement. Ideally, these stakeholders will be committed to the ultimate vision of an open-data platform. Stakeholders should strive to understand each other’s business needs for mobility data access and sharing. One venue in which this can take place is a Data Summit or conference to engage regional stakeholders and share ideas (Strategies 5a and 7f). Additional information on the purpose and benefits of data sharing in an open data platform is provided in appendix I (strategy 8b).
2. Implement the Data Governance Framework. This would include formally designating a regional Mobility Data Task Force (as a part of Regional ITS Committee) and Executive Group to coordinate on mobility data collection, data acquisitions, and cross-cutting data management issues (e.g., data quality, standards, metadata, data privacy and security); formalize the roles and responsibilities to support data governance in the region; develop and approve a Charter to set forth the purpose, goals, membership, roles and responsibilities, and "rules of engagement" regarding collaboration and coordination for the group; and develop supporting documents such as a Data Governance Manual, Data Catalog, Business Terms Glossary, and Data Sharing Agreements (Section 4) (strategy 7a).
3. Develop and publish a Data Catalog to increase awareness of mobility data availability, identifying datasets that can be openly shared. The data catalog should document the system of record for specific mobility data sources, metadata about the data systems, and contact information for the data stewards responsible for updating and maintaining the data (strategy 7d).
4. Conduct annual review of regional mobility data programs to identify duplicate data collection and storage activities. Eliminate and replace with single source of data for specific data programs to ensure data is collected once and used many times (strategy 1i).
5. Develop contract language for vendors to ensure data can be shared with other agencies (strategy 8c).

Step 3: Improve Data Integration and Collaboration

1. Address needs for data standards:
   1. Adopt data quality standards for collection, processing, use, and reporting of mobility data (strategy 2b).
   2. Implement standard data sharing agreement among stakeholders (strategy 5d).
   3. Agree on using a common linear network to facilitate data sharing and integration.
   4. Ensure coordination with applicable national data standards (strategy 3d).
   5. Develop and enforce data quality standards for travel time/speed data. Ideally, enforcement should be a collaborative effort whereby participants agree on holding each other accountable (strategy 3a).
   6. Develop minimum regional standards for Bluetooth/Geographic Positioning System (GPS) probe data (strategy 3c).
2. Address data security and privacy issues:
   1. Establish and maintain security standards to secure data and protect the privacy of individuals and contributing agencies (strategy 9a).
   2. Further explore Privacy by Design as a way to address privacy concerns (strategy 9d).
   3. With respect to accessing and using data with personal identifiable information (PII), stakeholders should be aware of applicable privacy protections and are encouraged to seek further legal guidance with their attorneys (strategy 9c).

Step 4: Build a Data Sharing Platform

Starting with speed and volume data, develop a roadmap to implement a common data platform:

1. Publish the data catalog from Step 2 on a wiki or Web site. Example Web site content is provided in appendix J.
2. Have agencies post all data in Open Data Format.
3. Address governance:
   1. Develop, maintain, and enforce a Data Governance Manual (strategy 7c).
   2. Develop policy to define responsibilities for supplying metadata, data dictionaries, and descriptive information for mobility data systems to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and usage of data (strategy 3e).
   3. Develop policy to define responsibilities for data storage, hosting, data retention/archival, and disposal (strategy 5b).
   4. Develop policy to define data ownership and dissemination rights (strategy 5c).
   5. Identify and assign governance roles and responsibilities (strategy 7b).
   6. Develop policy to define responsibilities for data quality assurance, including accuracy, timeliness, completeness, validity, coverage, and accessibility (strategy 2a).
   7. Establish a communication protocol and plan for communicating performance measure results to executive level staff, Mobility Data Task Force, and data users/stakeholders (strategy 10b).
   8. Clearly document policies, standards, and procedures and distribute to all staff responsible for collecting, maintaining, or distributing mobility data (strategy 9b).
4. Address data collection and integration:
   1. Identify applications that use expanding data sources (strategy 1j).
   2. Involve network/database administrators from partner agencies in development of shared data portal (strategy 6c).
   3. Develop systematic process to gather/update travel time/speed data from partner agencies (strategy 1g).
   4. Document quality control procedures, including instructions on how to process data errors (strategy 2d).
   5. Explore use of tools to integrate data from other systems and to enhance data sharing among regional stakeholders. These could include use of XML formats for sharing data, GPS technology for collecting and geocoding data location, and GIS tools for geographical display of data (strategy 6a).
   6. Develop standard data template format to foster joint usage and collaboration on mobility data (strategy 3b).
   7. Require metadata for mobility data systems (strategy 2c).
   8. Develop metadata guidelines to indicate data name, size, data type, where data is located, data ownership, update frequency, age of data, and how data can be used or integrated with other data sources (strategy 3f).
   9. Develop validation rules and allowable values for coded fields and incorporate these rules into data systems and data repositories. Use established validation rules to the greatest extent possible (strategy 2e).
   10. Conduct risk assessment to identify data risks (strategies 11a and 11b).
5. Develop a data warehouse with classification system and querying capabilities.
6. Leverage and expand the use of Waze data regionally across jurisdictional boundaries, including every agency in the Regional ITS Committee. Use Waze as a pilot to share traffic operations data among agencies. Additionally explore the use of Waze to further support the development of performance measures.

Step 5: Implement Performance Measures to Track Success

1. Adopt a set of performance indicators to measure program activities (i.e., outputs) and confirm the region’s governance program is delivering results (i.e., outcomes). Output indicators quantify the activities of the Task Force and reflect the level of effort expended or scale/scope of activities. Outcome indicators quantify the effectiveness of the Task Force in terms of meeting its mission and stated goals. Example output and outcome indicators are provided in the Example Data Governance Manual in appendix G.
2. Document the adopted measures in the Data Governance Manual.
3. Develop a plan for monitoring performance of program activities.

Internal Hillsborough MPO Implementation Plan

Step 1: Improve Multimodal Transportation Database

1. Identify resource needs (strategy 7g).
2. Develop and publish a Business Terms Glossary to define standard terminology for how mobility data is defined and used across the agency (strategy 7e).
3. Develop specifications for collecting, updating, maintaining, and archiving mobility data in the Multimodal Transportation Database and assign responsibility for these activities (strategy 1f).
4. Archive travel time/volume data and make it available to support MAP-21 requirements.
5. Address data gaps to meet requirements of the MAP-21/FAST Act Notice of Proposed Rule-making on Mobility Performance Measures (strategy 1c).
6. Determine improvements needed to the structure of the Multimodal Transportation Database to support data integration (strategy 4d).
7. Develop procedures for attaching travel time data to roadway segments in the Multimodal Transportation Database (strategy 4c).
8. Share published data in a centralized location such as the Multimodal Transportation Database, SharePoint, or open data portal that is accessible to internal and external stakeholders (strategy 6b).
9. Incorporate traffic count data from other local agencies into the Multimodal Transportation Database. Initial efforts should focus on short-term count data from Hillsborough and Pinellas MPOs (strategy 1a).
10. Address gaps in travel time/speed data, turning movement counts at intersections, origin/destination data, pedestrian/ bicycle activity data, and data to support calculation of return on investment (strategy 1b).

Step 2: Address Internal Governance

1. Identify and assign governance roles and responsibilities (strategy 7b).
2. Develop, maintain, and enforce a Data Governance Manual (strategy 7c).
3. Develop and implement a Knowledge Management system for organizing, storing, and archiving knowledge regarding mobility data sets and workflow processes. This ensures lessons learned and experiences pertaining to mobility data are retained and archived as staff retire or leave the organization (strategy 12a).
4. Develop policy to define responsibilities for data storage, hosting, data retention/archival, and disposal.

Step 3: Maximize Externally-Available Resources

1. Utilize NPMRDS travel time data and combine it with regional traffic volume data (strategy 1d).
2. Leverage the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) as a tool for data integration. RITIS is available through FDOT District 7, so no procurement purchase is required. The MPO should facilitate the RITIS implementation effort from planning through fruition (strategy 4a).

Step 4: Improve Technical Know-How

1. Develop procedures for conducting analyses such as determining the average travel time and standard deviation during the PM peak on a typical weekday, or determining whether there is a correlation between travel time on arterials and fatality rates (strategy 6d).
2. Develop and implement training program on use of analysis tools (strategy 6e).