Our 2017 Year in Review

Happy new year! (We’re less than three weeks in, so we can still say that – right??)

Open Referral’s 2017 Year in Review is available to read here, and embedded below. (See our previous year-in-review reports here in our public document gallery.)

Some highlights from this year:

• Upgraded our technology to help resource directory providers share data through interoperability, including both improvements of the Human Service Data Specification (our resource directory data exchange schema) and the introduction of the Human Service Data API protocols (a set of OpenAPI specifications to support real-time data access and management).

• Developed new tools to support adoption and facilitate data sharing: a documentation microsite (Docs.OpenReferral.Org), a redeployable ‘developers portal,’ a data validator, and a lightweight content management system (in Airtable).

• Supported a range of technology providers as they adopt these protocols: from Socrata to Urban Insight to Healthify, our adopters are serving hundreds of referral providers, governments, and healthcare institutions that help millions of people find and use information about health, human, and social services.

• Pioneered new forms of resource data business models that are both “open” and sustainable: Miami Open211 is piloting an approach to ‘I&R as a data utility.’ The Florida Legal Aid Resource Federation is testing a funder-supported peer-to-peer data sharing network. And new pilots in California, Maryland and elsewhere are prototyping data infrastructure to support cooperative, federated networks.

Overall, 2017 offered us early glimpses at a future in which resource directory data is sustainably and reliably provided to communities as a public good – freely available to all, for use in a wide array of ways that help people meet their needs and help communities thrive.

We are excited to see this vision come into even clearer focus in 2018, as we chart our course to the next chapter: Open Referral 2.0. Thank you for standing with us on this journey!