Open Referral’s Year in Review for 2025 is out now. You can read through it here (and you can browse every Annual Report since 2014 here).
This was a really difficult year, and I think it’s important for us to name that difficulty: the rise to power of ethno-nationalist reactionary forces, in the United States and around the world, that are acting – often unlawfully – to disenfranchise and even harm vulnerable people. Systems of healthcare and social services are critical fronts in this struggle: funding is being clawed back, care infrastructure is being dismantled, and data is being used for surveillance and targeting of marginalized populations and dissidents.
Given the daunting scale of these crises, it can be difficult to know how to appropriately respond. I’m personally eliciting feedback from our partners and advisors as to what it might mean for us to rise to meet the challenge of this moment. We want to hear from you about it.
In the midst of this disjuncture, we are resolved that – now more than ever – communities ought to have control in the production and use of information about the resources that are available to people in need.
Toward that end, Open Referral has continued to make progress in this past year: upgrading our standards, making our documentation more useful, developing new tools for working with resource data and for designing resource data partnerships that are scalable and sustainable.
We welcome your participation and input in this process, and encourage you to help us chart our course through these dark times. Please join us in the Community Forum and let us know what you think!
Many thanks to those who have helped move our work forward this year, and to everyone working to help their neighbors. Stay safe, and protect each other.
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