Project Meeting 2024.08.20

Agenda

• Discuss administrative transition options for ActivitySim

Action Items

• Joe and Alex are working with Ellen to get a list of all the things AMPO does. They'll report back at a future meeting.
• Joe to make the WSP Telecommute Improvements SOW and presentation deck available to everyone, for those who didn't attend the partner-only meeting last week.

Meeting Notes

Administrative Transition

• Decentralizing Option
  • Alex was not available at the meeting but had proposed an option to decentralize, with no common pooled funds, but a group that can get together and coordination.
  • The OMSC was presented as an example of how this could work. However, when they want to do something big, they need intergovernmental agreements between the different agencies, and they need one contracting agency to take the lead. This works ok because they are all in Oregon and have a history of intergovernmental agencies. From a decision-making perspective, there is a main committee and sub committees, and that works well. (Note that there is a similar structure for decision-making proposed in the Roadmap that we may want to revisit.)
  • Opinion: If going with this option, it’ll look like model development before ActivitySim. No one is the single owner of the primary fork anymore. It’ll be very easy for agencies to decide that they want to invest in a new feature that will change something about how ActivitySim works and leave other agencies behind. On the other hand, there are good reasons/outcomes with this approach: agencies do have different priorities and the models may better serve their specific needs.
• Centralized Option, as it is today
  • Benefits
    • There has been great collaboration between CS, WSP, and RSG in optimizing the model. If decentralized, it might not have been undertaken by a single agency or it would have been so customized to the specific implementation that other agencies couldn’t utilize it effectively.
    • We have a lot of momentum in the current structure, and it’s working.
    • We could continue seamlessly, if done right.
  • Risks
    • If we find a new home similar to AMPO, we could run into the same problem in a few years. We want to control our own destiny.
  • Centralized options
    • Reengage with AMPO and see if we can negotiate back in with AMPO. This is the path of least resistance. Some Executive Directors have already tried to reach out to Bill Keyrouze at AMPO. Suggestion that it might be more effective/impactful if the Executive Directors coordinated and approached Bill collectively.
      • Some background on coordination with AMPO before this change: There were delays in contracting due to some language and monetary considerations. 8% of the total dollars had been going to AMPO to cover their staff time and other expenses that they would incur (lawyers, web developer, etc.), but have said that they were losing money on this effort. Joe and Alex were willing to increase that but wanted to see justification (staff hours, etc.) and the trend to see how things have changed over time. They got some information but some was just verbal. They left it that they would bump up from 8% to 10% and direct charges could be charged directly. Joe didn’t want to make changes to the agreements because that could take a long time with each agency, but requested the same type of info that they get from the consultants (like accounting of hours). Joe hasn't heard back on this request yet. Maybe they said they can’t provide the accounting, but they never countered with the proposal that Joe/Alex provided. They never got a notification that 10% wouldn’t have been enough and they needed X%d.
    • Set up our own thing - Joe to look into this more.
    • YPTC (your part time controller) was mentioned. They provide assistance to non-profits and we could get an estimate for services we think we need.
    • AMPO-like alternative. This could be another government agency or a private company could offer program management services.
• Next steps
  • Joe and Alex are working with Ellen to get a list of all the things AMPO does. They'll report back at a future meeting.
  • Subcommittees to explore the possible administrative transition options and report back to the group. We'll use next Tuesday's meeting to create breakout groups to discuss further.
    • AMPO reengagment discussion to be lead by Mark Moran
    • Doing our own thing discussion to be lead by Joe C
    • Decentralized options to be lead by Alex B

ActivitySim Release 1.3

• Jeff pushed ActivitySim release 1.3 on GitHub. He’s working on pushing out the associated pieces with that (installer, conda forge, etc.) so that everyone can use it. It’ll take a few days, but it’s working through the last couple of pieces so everyone has access to all the tools.

Phase 9b

• Sijia presented to partners only last week on the Telecommuting improvements. They will work on moving the task order forward. Joe to make the SOW and the deck available to everyone, for those who didn't attend the partner-only meeting last week.