This report describes how software professionals at the Norwegian public transport organization Entur use open source processes and tools to leverage digital transformation. Moving software acquisition from procurement to open source and in-house development can deliver value but also entails challenges. 

A comparative analysis of the Mobility Data Specification and alternative standards - lessons learned for the Swedish transport system

Previous research results show that Mobility Data Specification (MDS) has been developed and widely spread in a relatively short time, and that the use of MDS has helped cities implement regulatory issues relating to e-scooters and also created business opportunities for external software developers (Rudmark et al., 2023). The main purpose of this report is to, through comparative analysis, further explore and evaluate which success factors can explain OMF/MDS's quick results and to make recommendations for the Swedish transport system based on the analysis. Special consideration is also given to how the EU's delegated acts relate to the various standards. The report builds further on results from previous research within the project (Rudmark, 2022a, 2022b; Rudmark et al., 2023). In addition, a number of supplementary interviews have been conducted with individuals with experience from NeTEx, MDS and NOPTIS.

Connected vehicles generate new data streams that present promising opportunities for policymakers to monitor and learn from events and behavior. To explore what we can learn from how public entities leverage ubiquitous data streams for policy development and enforcement, we draw on a case study of the standard Mobility Data Specification (MDS) and its use by cities to regulate E-scooter operators. Our findings suggest that (1) the richness of real-time data changes the speed of policy revision, (2) data access enables moving some micro-decisions to the edge, and (3) policy will be formulated as fixed or flexible with different amendment rules.

In recent years, e-scooters have become increasingly common in cities around the world, and municipalities have been working with digital solutions to regulate and monitor their use. The Mobility Data Specification (MDS) is one such standard that many cities use to establish a digital infrastructure for electric scooters. MDS has helped cities with regulatory issues and created business opportunities for outside software developers. This report has particularly focused on business models and ecosystems, semantic interoperability, information security and privacy protection, and data ownership under MDS.

The enrolment of third-party developers is essential to leverage the creation and evolution of data ecosystems. When such complementary development takes place without any organizational consent, however, it causes new social and technical problems to be solved. In this paper, we advance platform emulation as a theoretical perspective to explore the nature of such problem-solving in the realm of open platforms. Empirically, our analysis builds on a 10-year action design research effort together with a Swedish authority. Its deliberate change agenda was to transform unsolicited third-party development into a sanctioned data ecosystem, which led to a live open platform that is still in production use. Theoretically, we synthesize and extend received theory on open platforms and offer novel product and process principles for this class of digital platforms.

In recent years, the e-scooter has gained exceptional worldwide adoption, and their hybrid vehicle design has placed them in a legislative void. To this end, many cities are developing local regulations to govern and follow-up e-scooter operations within their jurisdiction. As e-scooters are equipped with hardware like SIM cards, GPS sensors, and accelerometers, the vehicles can both collect and act on digital information. Increasingly, cities thus draw on these capabilities using the Mobility Data Specification (MDS) as a soft digital infrastructure to e.g., express local regulations and collect operator data for compliance purposes. This paper uses interview data from European and U.S. cities, e-scooter operators, and systems integrators to provide an overview of the history and components of MDS. The paper also presents cities’ current uses and emerging challenges regarding using MDS for regulation, compliance monitoring, as well as data analytics for physical infrastructure planning.

Den här rapporten riktar sig till dig som söker vägledning om digital infrastruktur och elsparkcyklar, eller har intresse för samspelet mellan policy och digitalisering för elsparkcyklar. Rapporten innehåller sju rekommendationer till kommuner om hur de kan använda den tekniska standarden Mobility Data Specification (MDS) i samband med elsparkcyklar: - MDS är lämpligt för svenska kommuner på kort och medellång sikt. - MDS är möjligt att använda under GDPR, men det behövs nationella riktlinjer för hur kommuner bör hantera MDS under GDPR. - Använd MDS för att uttrycka vissa regler digitalt och bygg också upp central kompetens om hur regler och föreskrifter bäst uttrycks digitalt. - Använd MDS för att följa upp regelefterlevnad men komplettera med fysiska kontroller. Införliva säkerhetsmarginaler i regler och sträva efter öppenhet i uppföljningsalgoritmer. - Använd MDS i planeringssyfte men var uppmärksam på att tolkningen och implementeringen av GDPR påverkar omfattningen av användbarheten. - Ställ krav på att leverantörer publicerar öppna data och överväg om ni kan nyttja en central aktör för att publicera öppna data. - Bygg inte eget systemstöd på kommunnivå. Handla i stället upp en extern systemleverantör eller överväg en gemensam systemlösning. Utveckla samtidigt egen kompetens i kommunen om samspelet mellan systemlösningar och trafikpolicyer. Rekommendationerna bygger primärt på intervjuer med personer som arbetar med frågor om mobilitet och digitala tekniska standarder. Majoriteten av de intervjuade organisationerna har en digital infrastruktur för elsparkcyklar, baserad på MDS. De intervjuade arbetar i städer och kommuner, myndigheter, mobilitetsföretag och företag som arbetar med systemintegration, särskilt med MDS. De intervjuade finns i Sverige, inom EU och i USA.

Public agencies are increasingly publishing open data to increase transparency and fuel data-driven innovation. For these organizations, maintaining sufficient data quality is key to continuous re-use but also heavily dependent on feedback loops being initiated between data publishers and users. This paper reports from a longitudinal engagement with Scandinavian transportation agencies, where such feedback loops have been successfully established. Based on these experiences, we propose four distinct types of data feedback loops in which both data publishers and re-users play critical roles.

In the last decade, private companies have successfully used crowdsourcing to revolutionise mobility, while public transport companies are still mostly failing to utilise the benefits of crowdsourcing. The application of crowdsourcing in public transport is a new area of academic research, and research on crowdsourcing en route in real-time is missing. This research aims to address this gap, explore opportunities and challenges of this type of crowdsourcing, and conceptualise this phenomenon. The research is based on empirical data collected in five Northern European countries. Our research findings help identify areas where crowdsourcing en route can add value to public transport: new forms of communication, opportunities to communicate with third parties, and improved transit planning and optimisation. Identified challenges are related to behavioural change for users, a need to develop infrastructure to enable crowdsourcing en route, and financial rationalities.