Open Referral’s data exchange standards enable different organizations to share resource directory data among different information systems. This makes it possible for communities to ensure that knowledge about the resources available to people in need can be efficiently managed and effectively accessed across an entire information ecosystem of different technologies.
To make this kind of cooperation actually happen, however, people still need to work together to figure a lot of things out.
Who should be responsible for what? What will we need to do to actually make it all work? The answer to these questions really depends on the particular context of any given community. The Human Service Data Specs don’t in and of themselves produce quality resource directory data, or make that work sustainable; they just make it much easier to seek and find such solutions!
Open Referral has helped develop such partnerships with dozens of communities over the years, and we’ve now assembled an array of materials that can help make partnership development easier – and even fun!
So we’re excited to share the first version of our “Resource Data Collaboration Toolkit.” See here for a summary document that links out to a whole set of materials, all available in our public documentation folder.
This Resource Data Collaboration Toolkit is comprised of a set of guiding resources, operational protocols and reference materials to help design and implement partnerships that can establish accessible and sustainable resource directory infrastructure that is accountable to the particular needs of a given community.
The toolkit includes:
- Partnership development tools that can help organizations design, implement, and evaluate a shared collaborative strategy;
- Data management policies and protocols that can promote reliable, interoperable resource data collection, management, and exchange.
- Technical tools with which partners can collect and share resource data; publish a user-friendly website; compare and exchange data; and improve data quality.
For instance, this toolkit includes a set of guiding questions that can help organizations think through each step in the process of designing a mutually beneficial, sustainable partnership – and a templated example of a partnership memorandum that can formalize their agreements.
The toolkit also includes templated examples of style guides and operational processes that partners can use to ensure that their data is not only syntactically interoperable (through the use of HSDS) but consistent and compatible across contexts. And we’ve also included technical tools – ranging from a simple template of a spreadsheet for ‘flat’ resource directory data that can be used for basic data collection and/or imports, to fully-mature open source website software that organizations can use to produce, exchange, and publish directory data as an enterprise service for their community.
Given our work with community organizations, government agencies, healthcare systems, philanthropic funders, and more, we believe these materials may be useful in various combinations to any community-based initiative that seeks to improve the usability, reliability, and sustainability of resource directory information in their region.
(This first version of the toolkit was prototyped in the Early Childhood Coordination Systems project with our partners at the Washington Communities for Children. You can read about this example of how these materials are being used in this report on last year’s activities in the ECCS program. Our thanks to everyone involved in the Washington ECCS project for their insights and efforts!)
The index for the Resource Data Collaboration Toolkit is here. All of these materials (and more) can be accessed in our newly reorganized public documentation folder here.
These resources are still in draft form; we’d welcome your feedback on how they might be improved or expanded. We encourage prospective resource data stewards and partners to try these tools, and let us know how you think we might improve or expand upon them in the future. Please reach out to [email protected]
Leave a Reply