Category: Blog
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Collaboration in crisis: responses to the pandemic across our network
With the world in crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health, human, and social service providers face a harrowing dilemma: need is skyrocketing, even as providers’ ability to actually help is severely compromised. Many institutions have struggled to respond or even closed down entirely – while many new efforts to meet communities’ needs have emerged…
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Presenting ORServices 3.0: a Complete Laravel-based Open Referral Directory Solution
I’m happy to announce that Sarapis is releasing a Laravel-based Open Referral Directory Solution (ORServices) as open source code! This software enables anyone to create their own community resource directory information system — with a level of design and functionality that is comparable to proprietary resource directory software systems that are available on the market.…
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Delivering Open Referral Solutions with Airtable
In 2018, with a small grant provided by the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems to the Sahana Software Foundation, Sarapis developed an Airtable template of a community resource database using Open Referral’s Human Services Data Specification (HSDS). This project responded to a need articulated by many in our community for a lightweight, easy-to-use resource…
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Providing Access to Legal Assistance through Instant Attorney
[Welcome to Everett Pompeii of Clerical.AI! We are excited to feature this as our most recent highlighted project from the field of legal services.] Where should you refer someone for legal help? The answer given is usually one of two extremes: free legal aid or the local bar association. There are other options out there,…
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Our 2019 Year in Review
As January 2020 comes to a close, I’m pleased to share our Year in Review report for Open Referral’s 2019. The report is available to download here. You can also read it embedded in this blog post below. This year, our report features voices of stakeholders across our network — including social workers and legal…
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Miami Open211: developing new business models for resource data-as-a-service
Open Referral has been helping the Miami-Dade 2-1-1 Helpline explore new kinds of partnership models that can deepen the impact of their operations while enhancing the sustainability of their program. (In 2017, we reported on the first phase of our … Continue reading →
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Introducing Open Referral’s data transformation toolkit
We’re excited to introduce a set of tools that make it easier to standardize resource data. Community resource directory data (i.e., information about health, human, and social services available to people in need) is deceptively complex. In order to accurately represent the relationships between organizations, the services they provide, and the locations they are offered,…
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The DC Community Resource Information Exchange: Phase One Report
The District of Columbia’s community of health, human, and social service providers are struggling with a familiar challenge: they want to be able to more effectively coordinate care among their patients and clients, yet their systems can’t currently ‘talk’ to each other. In response to this issue, DC’s Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF) initiated…
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Not another directory of services! Adopting Open Referral in the UK
Today we welcome to the blog Mike Thacker of Porism Limited. Porism is a technical partner of the Local Government Association (LGA), a membership organisation of English local authorities, which owns the Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA). Porism works with iStandUK, a local government standards body that promotes efficiency, transformation, and transparency…