Category: Pilots

  • The Open Referral API project

    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.…

  • The Florida Legal Resource Directory Project

    The Florida Legal Resource Directory Project

    [Update: This pilot has come to a successful conclusion! Read our final report here.] Legal problems: sometimes you don’t even know you have one until it’s too late. When it comes to people with low incomes, legal problems of various kinds — issues with landlords, family disputes, rejected benefits, etc — can be outright debilitating. Yet while…

  • Open Referral in Oklahoma!

    Open Referral in Oklahoma!

    This is a guest post from Aaron Bean of Asemio. Welcome, Aaron! We’re pleased to introduce the first iteration of the Oklahoma Open 2-1-1 project, which is leveraging the Ohana platform and the Open Referral format to make it easier for Oklahoma residents to find and share information about community resources that can help improve…

  • Making Complexity Friendly

    Last year, SIMLab completed a project [discussed previously on this blog] with DC Public Library (DCPL) to find out how the library could deliver and maintain good information on social services in DC. Funded by the Knight Foundation’s Prototype Fund, this project sparked a prolonged investigation into how the American social safety net is constructed. What…

  • Open Referral in Ontario: A Big Step Forward

    Open Referral in Ontario: A Big Step Forward

    [This guest post is from Karen Milligan, the new executive director of Ontario 211. Welcome, Karen!] Excerpt: In partnership with iCarol, and leveraging the Human Services Data Specification, we are now developing a new web platform with new search capabilities to provide accurate and timely information to the public. Behind the scenes of this platform,…

  • Welcome to Miami Open211

    Welcome to Miami Open211

    For more than thirty years, Switchboard of Miami has helped residents of Miami-Dade County find information about health and human services whenever someone has picked up the phone and dialed 2-1-1. This makes Switchboard one of the longest-serving referral providers in the field. We’re proud to announce that Code for Miami is now working with…

  • 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…

  • 2015 in Review: who’s doing what, where and why

    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…

  • 2015 In Review: Much Progress and Many Thanks

    2015 In Review: Much Progress and Many Thanks

    As we wrap up 2015, I’ve taken a moment to review our progress over the course of the year. It’s been a long journey with lots of moving pieces, and I’m so inspired by the many people who are playing roles of all kinds in this collective effort to reimagine a safety net for the…