Implementation Roadmap¶

Current Status (Updated 2026-07-05)¶

Progress: Milestone 33 is complete. Wait Time Canada is now in a stewardship and selective-expansion phase: the public roadmap emphasizes methodology, limitations, local development, safe public use, source freshness, careful public-health resource scope, and disciplined maintenance rather than broad feature churn. The public documentation boundary cleanup is complete and captured in ADR-0026. Roadmap wording avoids hospital-choice recommendation framing and uses system-pressure terminology instead. ADR-0027's public source-freshness offload scaffold is merged; remaining pilot work is trusted runner provisioning and manual validation outside this repository. The 2026-06-22 maintenance pass aligned backend setup and CI with the checked-in uv.lock, added migration sequence guardrails, added frontend test-file type checking, and archived completed repo-audit planning stubs out of the active planning root. The 2026-06-27 follow-up added a practical local-build secret-handling policy, a checksum-backed migration ledger, disposable database verification, frontend audit remediation through the Vitest 4 toolchain upgrade, and a manual Playwright lane that no longer depends on production secrets. The same operational-maintenance wave added ADR-0028 critical-only notification mode so noncritical source-health incidents can remain stateful without paging during cost-constrained periods. The 2026-06-28 autonomous overnight maintenance pass added focused regression coverage across frontend API/UI and backend operational helpers, archived the completed work queue, and added an active-doc guard against stale GitHub Actions cadence claims. The 2026-07-05 deep-evidence maintenance audit corrected hospital API pagination behavior, removed noisy/sensitive success logging, removed broken backend package script metadata, refreshed setup/API/environment/migration documentation, and recorded remaining nonessential findings in docs/maintenance-audit.md. The follow-up 2026-07-05 professionalization pass neutralized code-adjacent writing in templates, source comments, test comments, scripts, and parked operations docs without changing runtime behavior.

Wait Time Canada is a four-province health systems observatory covering Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia. The platform audits publicly reported emergency department wait-time data, preserves methodology metadata, and exposes where direct comparisons are invalid.

Completed foundations:

• PostgreSQL schema, ontology enums, and source provenance tracking
• Four provincial scraper lanes with source-health reporting
• Methodology divergence warnings and comparability matrix
• Data quality dashboard, anomaly detection, and methodology-change tracking
• Aggregation pipeline for raw, hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly summaries
• Analytics and benchmarking dashboard
• Quebec stretcher-occupancy capture and historical occupancy trends
• Ontario-first public-health resources module with source caveats
• Privacy, terms, citation metadata, security policy, and contributor guidance
• Public documentation boundary cleanup with private notes moved to the private/shared operations source of truth
• Documentation and CI guardrails for public-boundary checks, human-authorship policy, roadmap freshness, ontology drift, and Docs CI path coverage
• ADR-0027 strategy, public source-freshness offload contract, and copy/adapt-only trusted-runner examples for scraper, watchdog, and aggregate adoption
• ADR-0028 critical-only operational notification mode with persisted notified-tier state for scraper and public-health source incidents
• Backend uv.lock setup and CI alignment, migration sequence validation, and frontend test-file type checking

Public Documentation Boundary¶

This repository contains public project documentation and reproducible development information. Deployment details, credentials, monitoring configuration, private operational notes, and environment-specific production paths are intentionally excluded from public documentation.

Active Priorities¶

Now¶

• Keep the methodology ontology and comparability logic stable.
• Maintain source freshness, data-quality, and anomaly-detection behavior.
• Keep /resources Ontario-first, provenance-first, and explicit about source scope and freshness.
• Preserve the 30-day raw-measurement retention policy while keeping permanent aggregates for long-term analysis.
• Keep the scraper and heartbeat workflows aligned with the public freshness contract, using manual dispatch as the fallback path.
• Keep critical-only operational notification mode active for GitHub fallback workflows until the trusted source-freshness offload pilot is validated.
• Complete the ADR-0027 source-freshness offload pilot with trusted runner provisioning and manual validation, using the public contract in docs/operations/heartbeat-offload-pilot.md and keeping GitHub manual dispatch as fallback.
• Preserve locked backend dependency, migration sequence, and frontend test-type-check guardrails during routine maintenance.
• Keep frontend dependency audit remediation current; the 2026-06-27 pass leaves npm audit --audit-level=high clean.
• Keep the 2026-07-05 maintenance audit and professionalization follow-ups focused and separate from routine stewardship work; defer broad API-error normalization, backend service splitting, dependency freshness, and historical-script ownership decisions to dedicated passes.

Next¶

• Extend public research artifacts around methodology divergence and reporting limitations.
• Revisit multi-province equity layers only when province-specific source and tract validation are available.
• Continue selective public-health resource expansion only when the source is official, reusable, and product-relevant.
• Improve accessibility, localization, and mobile usability across high-traffic flows.

Later¶

• Evaluate additional provinces where public data sources are stable enough for responsible ingestion.
• Explore smarter scrape scheduling that reduces unnecessary load while preserving freshness.
• Expand trend and export tooling for research and policy users.

Active Roadmap¶

Now¶

• P0 / Preserve clinical safety boundaries: Keep emergency, non-triage, and non-medical-advice disclaimers prominent across public surfaces.
• P0 / Preserve ontology comparability: Keep metric-family, start-event, end-event, and statistic-type matching as the direct-comparison rule.
• P1 / Maintain source freshness: Keep source status and data-quality reporting explicit without exposing private monitoring configuration.
• P1 / Complete source-freshness offload pilot: Use the public contract in docs/operations/heartbeat-offload-pilot.md to validate trusted scraper, watchdog, aggregate, and smoke commands manually before enabling trusted schedules.
• P1 / Restore remaining scheduled workflow cadence: Keep GitHub manual dispatch as the fallback path, and remove scraper and heartbeat scheduled triggers only after the source-freshness offload pilot completes a clean proof window.

Next¶

• P1 / Extend public methodology artifacts: Maintain case studies and export examples with complete source attribution and limitations.
• P1 / Select resource expansion carefully: Add public-health resource sources only when official, reusable, and clearly caveated.
• P1 / Harden offloaded operations: Document runner isolation, secret handling, log retention, failure summaries, and rollback procedures before moving each secret-bearing workflow.
• P2 / Maintain public docs boundary: Keep local setup, API contracts, and methodology docs reproducible and free of private operational details.

Later¶

• P2 / Evaluate additional provinces: Add provinces only when public source stability supports responsible ingestion.
• P2 / Explore smarter scheduling: Reduce unnecessary upstream load while preserving public freshness expectations.
• P2 / Reassess external CI or full Forgejo migration: Revisit broader CI migration only if the hybrid offload pilot does not meet cost, reliability, or operational-safety expectations.

Roadmap Operating Model¶

• Single source of truth: this file summarizes active public roadmap state.
• Priority discipline: P0 = correctness/reliability blockers, P1 = capability delivery, P2 = polish and documentation.
• Definition of done: code merged with relevant tests, public docs updated when behavior or methodology changes, and source limitations preserved.
• Clinical safety: no feature should provide medical advice, triage, or hospital-choice recommendations.

Completed Milestones¶

Architecture Reference¶

Database Schema (15 tables)¶

Key ADRs¶

Future Work¶

• Additional province evaluation: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan only where public source stability supports responsible use.
• Multi-province equity methodology: defer until source acquisition, geographic linkage, and uncertainty communication can be province-specific.
• Public-health resources: avoid broad batch expansion; prefer narrow, source-validated additions with clear caveats.
• Research outputs: maintain case studies, export interpretation guidance, and exported datasets with complete methodology labels and source attribution.
• CI/runtime cost control: complete the ADR-0027 source-freshness pilot, then offload trusted recurring operations incrementally while preserving GitHub as the public collaboration surface.
• Tooling maintenance: keep backend setup, GitHub Actions, and local verification commands aligned with the checked-in lockfiles and testing guidelines.
• Maintenance follow-ups: use docs/maintenance-audit.md as the current follow-up ledger for the July 2026 repo-health and professionalization passes, especially API error response hardening, docs toolchain availability, historical-script ownership, and focused backend service maintainability work.

Implementation Plan References¶

Existing public historical plans retained for context:

• docs/planning/archive/maintenance-2026-06-22-tooling-roadmap-maintenance.md
• docs/planning/archive/maintenance-2026-06-04-public-docs-cleanup.md
• docs/planning/archive/maintenance-2026-06-12-autonomous-stewardship.md
• docs/planning/archive/2026-04-23-repo-audit-follow-up-board.md
• docs/planning/archive/2026-04-23-repo-audit-remediation-plan.md
• docs/planning/archive/heartbeat-offload-pilot-scaffold-2026-06-13.md
• docs/planning/archive/milestone-17-quebec-occupancy.md
• docs/planning/archive/milestone-18-occupancy-frontend.md
• docs/planning/archive/milestone-23-quality-standardization.md
• docs/planning/archive/milestone-28-equity-real-data-ontario.md
• docs/planning/archive/milestone-29-equity-academic-rigor-hardening.md
• docs/planning/archive/public-health-data-hub-decision-brief.md