Personal Account Roaming for MaaS is the ability to use one user account across multiple Mobility-as-a-Service offerings. It is the concept (similar to cellular phone roaming) that’s been proposed to solve the problem caused by different MaaS platforms being used across the same country, region or ecosystem.
It relies upon a user having their personal data stored separately from each MaaS application or transport provider and only specific data (e.g. journeys taken = usage) then exchanged. This functionality then allows the user to roam and link and unlink their own personal account with different transport & mobility services, as THEY want.
The concept, described as decentralized or sovereign data, is based around the principle that every user is in control of their own data and that any data stored outside of the personal is not specific to the individual. It also potentially means the non-personal data collected (e.g. aggregated system-wide usage) could still be used by the MaaS platform to improve its operations and even shared externally as publicly-accessible Open Data, (assuming it completely anonymises the user).
However the decentralized / personal account cannot integrate with each different MaaS platform in different ways, this would create huge amounts of unnecessary work. Therefore some form of data sharing standardisation is needed for MaaS account roaming to work correctly, ideally in the form of an API specification.
The Open Transport Initiative has designed and published an Open Standard API specification for the sharing of those data entities needed in a decentralized account roaming mobility ecosystem. This free-to-use technology standard allows different MaaS platforms to implement a consistent way of allowing decentralized personal accounts to integrate with them and share the necessary user data as they roam.
What specific types of data can be shared?
Open Transport - Transport & Mobility Data Interoperability 