FAQ Category: Overview

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 →

The primary users of HSDS are people who manage resource directory information systems. Of course, these users are themselves intermediaries, working to meet the needs of other users. So let’s back up to look at the big picture. We’ve identified … Continue reading →

Please note that Open Referral is not a platform and we do not collect or distribute resource data ourselves. Our primary objective is to help communities answer this question for themselves. We’d be glad to help you answer that question … Continue reading →

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 interact with each other.  Platforms enable data to … Continue reading →

Well, we don’t yet know the right solution! We’re just not going to wait around any longer for it to be figured out. So we’re taking action.  Essentially, we are asking: how should this data be open? This is a … Continue reading →

Open Referral recognizes the existence of a diverse array of taxonomies that are used to describe types of services, organizations, and people for whom services are available. Given that such categories are inherently subjective – whereas Open Referral’s Human Services … Continue reading →

The short answer is no – Open Referral’s Human Service Data Specifications are the industry standard for resource directory information exchange.  In the United States, this is a result of the Alliance of Information and Referral System’s endorsement of HSDS as … Continue reading →

Of course they are!  We think it’s important for this information to be accessible to a whole ecosystem of services, and for the foreseeable future, call centers will be an essential component of a healthy ecosystem. That’s why it’s important … Continue reading →

No. Open Referral is not a database or a platform. We help other organizations evolve their resource databases into open platforms.  For what it’s worth, we reject the idea that community resource data can or should be treated like private … Continue reading →

No. We recognize that this is a local problem that should entail local solutions. That’s why we’ve developed an open data standard, which can be used by any community to find locally-appropriate methods of data sharing.