Author: Greg Bloom
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Miami Open211 Phase One: Our Report
Last year, the Miami Open211 project set out to demonstrate that an information-and-referral helpline operator can evolve into an open platform — providing machine-readable data as a service to its community — in ways that are both technically efficient and institutionally sustainable. This project, which began in partnership with Switchboard of Miami, was Open Referral’s first formal pilot with…
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Talking Open Referral at Stanford’s Data on Purpose
Last month I visited Stanford to speak at the 2017 Data on Purpose conference, sponsored by Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Digital Impact (née Markets for Good). From Possibilities To Responsibilities: Unlocking Data and Unleashing Its Potential (Jake Porway et al) from Stanford PACS. Much of the…
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The Open Referral API project
The Open Referral Initiative’s next chapter starts now! Open Referral has helped over a dozen community organizations find new ways to share resource directory information about the health, human, and social services available to people in need. Our Human Services Data Specification provides a common ‘machine language’ that any technology can be programmed to understand.…
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Our 2016 Year in Review
I’m pleased to share Open Referral’s 2016 Year in Review. (You can browse the document here, download the complete PDF here, or skim through the document embedded at the end of this post.) Continue reading →
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Welcoming Benetech to Open Referral!
We’re pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with Benetech, one of the world’s leading non-profit software development organizations. Benetech was formed in 1989 and in the time since has developed a series of products that have improved lives and transformed industries around the world — starting with Bookshare (the world’s largest online library of…
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Leveling up: documentation improvements and spec upgrade
Last year, Open Referral introduced Version 1.0 of the Human Services Data Specification — an open data exchange format designed to make it easier for different organizations to share standardized information about the health, human, and social services available to people in need. Since then, a broad range of organizations have used the HSDS to…
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Joining Up Data Standards: the U.S. Data Federation and beyond
We’re pleased to announce that Open Referral is one of the first seven initiatives to be featured by the U.S. Data Federation, a new initiative from the federal General Services Administration, in association with Data.Gov, to promote the effective use of civic data through interoperability. As the GSA explains in its introduction of the new…
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The Civic Imagination Fellowship with Civic Hall Labs [UPDATED with video]
I’m excited to share that I’ve been invited to join Civic Hall Labs as part of their inaugural cohort of Civic Imagination Fellows. Civic Hall is a community center civic innovators located in the Flatiron District of New York City. It was started by the proprietors of the Personal Democracy Forum, which is a conference and…
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The 2016 AIRS style guide: newly open sourced!
The Alliance of Information and Referral Systems (www.airs.org) is the trade association for ‘information and referral’ providers across North America — such as 2-1-1s, Area Agencies on Aging, and other organizations that help people connect to services that can meet their needs. The AIRS Style Guide puts forth a formal set of recommended practices for collecting,…