Potentially yes! As an open standards and infrastructure initiative, Open Referral is platform-agnostic. We want to see a world in which there are many platforms that can all interoperate, so that people and organizations in communities can effectively and responsibly … Continue reading
Archives
Is Open Referral a Community Information Exchange?
We are not! The idea of a Community Information Exchange sounds great, but as we understand it, a CIE is infrastructure that facilitates the exchange of clients’ personal information among health and human service providers. This is outside of our … Continue reading
Is this really such a hard problem? Can’t AI/ML/blockchain/magic just take care of it?
Many of us, at one point or another, were hopeful that technology would provide quick fixes to systemic problems. Those hopes haven’t panned out. It turns out that some problems are so tricky that they can only really be fixed … Continue reading
Can I load my data into Open Referral? Can I get data from Open Referral?
No, Open Referral is not a database or a platform. We help other organizations evolve their resource databases into open platforms. You cannot load data into Open Referral; you can use our documentation and tooling to transform your data into … Continue reading
Have you seen that XKCD cartoon about Universal Standards? Aren’t standards futile?
Why yes we have seen that cartoon, many times, thanks, but no, the cartoon doesn’t show that efforts to develop standards are futile. To the contrary! We encourage skeptics of standards to take a closer read. The XKCD cartoon identifies … Continue reading
Shouldn’t we have a Yelp for Social Services? Why aren’t you trying to build that?
Lots of people are trying to build Yelp-type applications for social services. That’s not Open Referral’s role. There’s a range of reasons why: First, information about human services is a lot more complex, variable, and sensitive than restaurant data – … Continue reading
How can I help?
This is an open source initiative, by which we mean that anyone can freely participate in it and even adapt any of our content for their own purposes. There are lots of ways that you might be able to get … Continue reading
How can my community become a pilot project?
The formation of a pilot project probably starts with a champion who has credibility in the community and the drive to convene others around an effort to solve this problem. We expect this champion to emerge from either local government, … Continue reading
What is a pilot project?
Open Referral is led by local pilot projects in which stakeholders take action towards establishing accessible, interoperable and reliable community resource directory data. Pilots commit to using the Open Referral data model to exchange resource directory data among institutions — … Continue reading
Who are the Open Referral Initiative’s ‘users’?
We’ve identified four primary types of use that are relevant to this domain. Read more here for full personas and user stories. Seeking help (service users, clients, etc) Providing help (service providers, i.e. anyone helping someone find information about services) … Continue reading