Adding an MDS Agency ID
MDS uses Agency IDs in the program Policy Requirements endpoint to reference agencies in a unique, consistent, and comprehensive way.
If you are using the Requirements endpoint, agencies must both add a unique agency_id to our agencies.csv file, and add a link to their public Requirements URL here as well. See the Public Hosting section for more context.
You can do this by opening a Pull Request or an Issue here on GitHub, or letting the OMF Staff do it for you, per the instructions below. See our Contributor Guidelines for more details about contributing and having a useful GitHub community profile.
If you are comfortable with GitHub, you can create a GitHub pull request to add a new row of information needed for your company, in CSV format:
agency_country_iso_code,agency_state,agency_city,agency_name,agency_id,department_url,requirement_url
Example:
US,Atlantis,SimCity,Myst Transpo Agency,2411d395-04f2-47c9-ab66-d09e9e3c3251,https://www.simcity.gov/transporation,https://mds.simcity.gov/requirements/1.2.0
Fields:
-
agency_country_iso_code- Two letter ISO country code where your agency is located. -
agency_state- Geographic abbreviation or name of the state where your agency is located. -
agency_city- Geographic name of the city where your agency is located. -
agency_name- Full name of your governmental city/agency with proper capitalization. -
agency_id- A random UUID version 4. There are lots of ways to generate a unique UUID, like using this website. -
department_url- URL to the home page of your agency's department. -
requirement_url- Full https:// URL where your current Policy Requirements endpoint is located.
Important
If it's your first time contributing, you must sign the Contributor License Agreement.
Click the button on your Pull Request page and follow the instructions. We cannot merge your changes until this is complete.
Once it looks good on our end, we will merge it to the dev branch so it's live and you can start referring to and using it. This may take a few days.
Note: If you have more than one URL (eg, for different versions of MDS), you may add more rows for your agency.
Alternatively and possibly easier, you can open a GitHub Issue here and describe what you'd like to have added, and then the OMF Staff can create a pull request and update it for you.
Once it looks good on your end, we will merge it to the dev branch so it's live and you can start referring to and using it.
It may take a few days for us to create a branch and setup a pull request. If you would like to expedite the process, please create a pull request instead of an issue.
If you are allowing the OMF to host and maintain your Requirements file for you, the staff will take care of editing the agencies.csv file for you. See our OMF Hosting Guidance document for details.
You can start start referring to and using your ID as soon as it's live in the dev branch. In the next MDS release, the OMF will push it to the main branch as well.
When complete, we will also add you to our OMF website "MDS Users" page list of Cities Using MDS.
If you need help, please contact the OMF Staff.
