Teilnehmerversammlung

Datum: 16.05.2022 | (((eTicket Deutschland

What does the participants’ meeting do?

At (((eTicket Deutschland, there is grassroots democracy: all participants have a say. 

All participants in (((eTicket Deutschland may propose changes to the ticketing standard and vote on the proposed changes. This takes place at the annual participants’ meeting in Cologne. 

In the second quarter of 2012, we invited the participants in (((eTicket Deutschland to Cologne for the first time to vote on changes to the standard. At that time, representatives from around 140 companies attended. Today, there are more than 700 transport companies and networks participating. Naturally, not all of them come to Cologne; instead, they pool and delegate their votes. For example, a representative of a transport association votes on behalf of the transport companies that belong to that association. For a resolution to be adopted – whether it is a so-called ‘change request’ to the standard or an amendment relating to the Deutschland-Ticket – a three-quarters majority is required.

How the distribution of voting rights works

We spent a long time considering how we wanted to weight the voting shares: should the transport companies with the highest turnover also have the greatest voting rights? Or those with the most vehicles of their own? Those with the highest passenger volumes? Ultimately, we decided that those who invest heavily in the digital ticketing system should also have a significant say. After all, they bear the greatest burden when changes are made to the standard.

We have therefore linked the number of votes to the number of user media issued (for example, chip cards) and the number of Secure Application Modules (SAMs) issued (one of which is installed in each (((e-ticket terminal)):

  • Service providers with fewer than 50 SAMs receive one vote
  • Service providers with 51 to 151 SAMs receive two votes
  • Service providers using more than 2,500 SAMs receive 20 votes
  • Client contract partners and product managers with up to 50,000 SAMs also receive one vote
  • KVP and PV with up to 100,000 SAMs have two votes
  • KVP with up to 250,000 SAMs receive five votes
  • KVP with more than one million active SAMs have 20 votes
  • Product managers with up to 300,000 SAMs have seven votes; those with more than this have eight votes, which they may cast for or against a change.

If a transport company
is both a customer contract partner and a service provider, the so-called most-favoured-nation principle applies: if, for example, the company has 400 SAMs (5 votes) and 100,000 user media (2 votes), it has five votes in the participants’ meeting.

What participants vote on once a year

At (((eTicket Deutschland, all participating transport operators and associations can submit suggestions for improvements to the VDV core application as well as (((etiCORE. These are known as ‘change requests’. Once these change requests have been submitted and reviewed by the Standardisation Working Group (AG-S), participants in (((eTicket Deutschland vote
on them once a year.

These change requests serve to provide further detail and thus improve understanding of the contents of the specification.

These CRs relate to the correction of errors in the (((e-ticket systems that affect individual participants. These CRs must be implemented by the organisations concerned.

The service extensions are, for the time being, CRs that can be implemented on a voluntary basis. However, these optional functional extensions may become mandatory in subsequent versions of the EFM standard.  

This is how we – and the participants – prepare

We officially invite our participants at least six weeks before the meeting and send them a draft resolution containing the change requests to be voted on at the meeting. This gives the companies and consortia sufficient time to discuss the optimisation proposals internally.
In addition, around four weeks before the participants’ meeting, we offer a digital workshop at which all change requests are presented and explained in detail: what specifically is to change and what does this mean from a technical perspective? This gives participants the opportunity to ask very specific questions in advance and helps us to adapt the meeting documents accordingly.
 

Teilnehmerversammlung

Here you can see a participants’ meeting from 2016. At the time, Sjef Janssen was our managing director and also hosted the event. There weren’t many more people there than you can see in the picture. These days, the room at the Mondial is absolutely packed whenever we turn up.

Teilnehmerversammlung

Elke Fischer, who is presenting the submitted CRs here, played a key role in the development of the VDV core application. She is the founder of VDV-KA – and, until her retirement, headed the Standardisation Working Group, which reviews the submitted CRs. We named our collaboration platform (((efi after her. 

At that time, votes were still cast by a show of hands and using slips of paper: red for ‘no’, green for ‘yes’. 

Teilnehmerversammlung
Teilnehmerversammlung

Incidentally, Lisa cut out these slips of paper, handed them out and collected them again. She also took care of participant management – and the tiresome question of who wanted what for lunch. These days, we use digital tools for the headcount; there’s a buffet at lunchtime; and, as Lisa is now a product manager (and on parental leave), our office team looks after the participants.