Category: Blog
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iCarol announces support for exporting data to Open Referral’s Human Services Data Specification 1.0
For many years, leaders in the Information & Referral (I&R) industry have sought to improve the reliability of exchanging the data they curate about social and human service providers in their community, with partners. In any given region or metropolitan region, it is important for these providers to know about other providers so they can…
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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,…
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HelpSteps introduces new open source mobile app
For over ten years, HelpSteps has been helping the people of Greater Boston find the social services they need…. Recently, HelpSteps has been working with the Open Referral initiative. By standardizing the way that social services information is stored and shared, the team has positioned itself to work more closely with related organizations. Perhaps the…
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New Philanthropy Capital: Joining the Dots
Last October, I had the opportunity to visit London and spend some time learning about the UK social sector, at events such as the excellent NPC Ignites conference. On this trip, I was impressed by people’s sense of pride in the country’s long history of public service provision. But I also heard clear notes of…
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California Health Data Project Creates New Role in Civic Tech
This piece is co-authored by Ash Roughani and Joel Riphagen, and has been cross-posted from TechWire magazine. When the California Health Care Foundation launched the California Health Data Project last spring, it made a smart decision to create a new role in the civic innovation space. The foundation brought on California Health Data Ambassadors to…
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LegalServer’s First Take at an Open Referral Implementation
Jeff Hogue is the Director of Operations and Community Relations for LegalServer. LegalServer is a configurable web-based platform that dynamically responds to the complex, rapidly changing challenges faced by legal service providers who strive to provide effective advocacy to the most vulnerable among us. In this field of legal services, some of our major challenges…
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Introducing the Humanitarian Service Data Model
Immediately after a disaster, information managers collect information about who is doing what, and where, and then turn this information into “3W Reports.” While some groups have custom software for collecting this information, the most widespread tool for this work is the spreadsheet. (Indeed, the spreadsheet is still the “lingua franca” of the humanitarian aid community, which…
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Annual Review wrap-up: the path ahead
In 2014, we formed a table and conducted research. In 2015, we initiated action. In 2016, we’ll put these ideas to the test, and learn from our work. Based on your feedback so far, here’s what that might look like… (This note is far from a final word on the matter — please share your…
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2015 in Review: who’s doing what, where and why
In the last blog post, we discussed the different technological products that have emerged through Open Referral. [See our entire 2015 Year in Review here.] In this post, we’ll discuss the different projects in which people are using these tools to find new ways to share and use information about the health, human, and social services available…