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Why don’t government or funders require this data as a condition of funding?
Government and funders do require various kinds of data about their grantees, but it’s generally non-standardized and not specifically about services themselves. We anticipate that, as Open Referral becomes adopted by more institutions, governments and funders may begin mandating this … Continue reading
Why can’t you just get organizations to update their information themselves?
There are a number of factors that limit the reliability of organizations as sources of information about their own services: Organizations might not designate the responsibility for managing all of this information to any single person. A single organization might … Continue reading
What do we mean by ‘open platforms’? What’s an API?
A ‘platform’ is an ambiguous term that could mean a lot of different things — here we use it to refer to a system that connects producers and consumers, enabling them to conduct their own activities using external systems (which … Continue reading
What do we mean by ‘standards’? And why should we care?
By standards, we refer to common ways of doing things. In the case of data standards, that means an agreed-upon set of terms and relationships that define and structure information, so that it can be readily transferred between systems. With … Continue reading
What do we mean by ‘referral’? What is ‘information and referral’?
Broadly speaking, people seek ‘referrals’ to resources that can help them meet their needs. Community resource data is comprised of information about health, human, and social services available to people in need — which organizations provide these services, and how … Continue reading
What do we mean by ‘open data’?
Open means ‘free,’ as in ‘free speech.’ We are all entitled to it by fundamental right. Open means accessible. We have “open access” to things like roads and libraries — these are public goods, and anyone is able to use … Continue reading
What’s the opportunity?
Government agencies are increasingly managing public information as open data, as the world wide web is expanding the use of data standards for civic information. These shifts toward standardized, open civic data make it easier to share data across heterogeneous … Continue reading
What’s the problem?
Every community faces a similar challenge: there are many different kinds of health, human, and social services that are available to people in need, yet no one way that information about them is produced and shared. Instead, many organizations collect … Continue reading