Category: Blog
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Huertas de Datos: Open Referral in Madrid
Early last month, I traveled to Madrid to discuss the community resource directory data problem, and our work here in the Open Referral initiative, at the commencement of a civic hacking workshop hosted by Medialab-Prado. Medialab-Prado is a publicly-funded “citizen laboratory for the production, research and dissemination of cultural projects that explore collaborative forms of…
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Helping HelpSteps Step Forward
Conceived and built by a team at Boston Children’s Hospital, HelpSteps.com (formerly known as The Online Advocate) is designed to help individuals and families identify social service needs and connect to local organizations best suited to meet those needs. The database includes over 1,700 organizations in the greater Boston area, and is maintained through partnership…
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Preparing for the Worst, Hoping for the Best: Data Standards, Superstorm Sandy, and our Resilient Future
In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, many residents of New York City were left struggling. Though a broad array of supportive services are available to survivors — from home rebuilding funds to mental health treatment — it’s often hard for people to know what’s available and how to access it. New York City lacks any…
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First Resort: Building social services resources at DC Public Library
[This is a guest post from Keith Porcaro of Social Impact Lab (SIMLab). SIMLab is partnering with the DC Public Library and the DC Open211 project on a project made possible by the Knight Foundation’s Prototype Fund.] Particularly for those on the wrong side of the digital divide, people often turn to the library for information…
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Building Alameda County’s First Public Health & Human Services Data Portal
Cross-posted from the blog of the Urban Strategies Council. The stakeholders mentioned here all participated in the Open Referral workshop last July. Urban Strategies Council, First Five Alameda County and Eden I&R (the provider of 2-1-1 services in Alameda County) recently agreed to jointly build the first ever Health and Human Service Directory Data Portal…
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Open Referral all over: hacks at Code Across and Open Data Day
Last month, during International Open Data Day — which coincided with Code for America’s CodeAcross activities throughout the weekend of February 20-22nd — hundreds of civic hacking events around the world brought together community leaders, technologists, planners, government officials, and more. Participants identified common challenges and worked together to envision, design, and even prototype new…
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Deep Dive into version 1.0
Earlier this month, we published version 1.0 of the Human Service Data Specification (HSDS). Let’s take a deeper dive into it. What is the Human Service Data Specification (HSDS)? The HSDS is a format for data exchange, specifically designed to enable the publication of machine-readable data about health, human, and social services that are available…
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Introducing Version 1.0 of the Human Service Data Specification
We’re pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 of the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS, also known as the Open Referral format). Read the specification here: Google Docs and Github. The purpose of HSDS is to make it easy for community resource directory data to be exchanged among different kinds of information systems, in order to make information…
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Open Referral in Action: the Purple Binder Platform
This is a guest post from Joseph Flesh, the co-founder of Purple Binder. We’re proud to announce one of the first instances of open, standardized community resource data in action. Purple Binder and mRelief — another emerging civic technology startup based in Chicago — are using the Open Referral standard to integrate their applications. Purple Binder matches…