FAQ Category: Overview

Good question. What about it?! The Open Referral Initiative intends to establish interoperability and open exchange between different kinds of systems. This entails building on what is currently in use. At the same time, it also entails moving beyond barriers … Continue reading →

Great question! To find answers to this question, we need more opportunities to ask it. In Open Referral, we ask: how should this data be open?  If resource data is to be published in bulk for free, can premium real-time … Continue reading →

An API is an “application programming interface” which provides instructions for computer programs to interact with a database.  For example, you can get a forecast from the National Weather Service by going to Weather.Gov. But the NWS also offers a … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

No, Open Referral is not a database or a platform. We help facilitate cooperation among organizations that do have databases or platforms – so that they can share data effectively. Some members of our network may build tools that enable sharing … Continue reading →

Why yes we have seen that cartoon, many times, thanks– but no, it 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 a … Continue reading →

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 →