Introductions thread [welcome to Open Referral!]
Greg Bloom
As our work together gradually gets started, I want us all to take some time to introduce ourselves. Declan and Devin have already done so, and I hope to see everyone on this list eventually follow suit. (I know some of y’all may just be trying to lurk… be prepared to get noodged!)
We all want to know:
A bit about who you are.
Your experience with referral information systems, and what brought you to join this group.
A potential 'use case' of community resource data that you hope this work can make possible.
AND please share at least one or two of the following:
What are some resources you can bring to the table?
What needs do you have, with which others might be able to help?
What questions do you want us to try to answer?
Okay, I’ll go first!
So. I’m originally from Miami, Florida, and have been working in the health/human/social service sector in the District of Columbia (as in, the city itself — not the seat of the Federal Government) for about seven years. My professional experience is a mix of community organizing, fundraising, and communications of various other kinds.
Most of y’all have heard my story about how I came to this particular field, and what my vision is; for anyone new and/or interested in more details, you can read my essay published in Beyond Transparency last year.
A lot has happened since that essay was published. Right in the midst of my research, Google.org proposed their Civic Services schema to the W3C. This immediately seemed like it could be a game-changing development. Around the time my essay was published, I convened a conversation among Google.org, AIRS, Code for America, Aunt Bertha, and a number of ‘subject matter experts’ who had informed my research. That conversation led to the forming of this group; the development of this proposal that I’ve put before us; and finally, co-sponsorship of my work by Code for America and the Ohana project.
That brings us more or less up to date. So, for some thoughts on my role here moving forward:
My title here is Chief Organizing Officer of the Open Referral initiative, though I picked it with my tongue planted firmly in cheek. My power is essentially facilitative: I’m going to be synthesizing information, helping set agendas, seeking clarification, cheering greatness, intervening in anything that seems unconstructive, and of course, accounting for decisions along the way.
Also important to clarify: I’m not an employee of Code for America. They have contracted me specifically to provide services for the development of the Open Referral community (such as this email right here). As such, CfA is 'co-sponsoring’ the launch of this initiative — but it is very much ‘owned’ by all of us in this group. I’m looking to you all for leadership and vision (and help with graphic modeling!) and believe we can do things in a way that includes and supports a broad range of interests and perspectives. I’m always inclined to seek rough consensus, but my prerogative is always to solicit and defer to the expressed interests of actual stakeholders — in other words, the people who work in and/or seek help from health, human, and social services.
A final note, on principles. In the near term, I think it will benefit this community to articulate a set of our own principles. There are a number of existing sets of ‘open data' principles that we might consider. However, shared principles can only truly emerge from shared experiences.
That’s all for now! Thanks to those of you who have read this far. I’ll be nudging everyone to share their own introductions (which I assume will be shorter than mine, unless you got a stemwinder of a story yourself, in which case, let it loose :)
~greg
neil
Moncef Belyamani
Eric Jahn
Sophia Parafina
Fitch, Dale K.
Hi Group,
Dale Fitch, here, an academic in social work. I cut my teeth as a social worker 30 years ago on the United Way's "Bluebook," the forerunner for all community resource directories. I moved to academia 15 years ago and do research on human services and technology <http://ssw.missouri.edu/faculty_fitch.html>. I cut my I&R 'digital' teeth on the 2-1-1 implementation in Michigan in the early aughts. That experience and my other research has really guided me to the conceptual side of information system design, ala, soft systems methodologies, etc., focusing on the 'requirements analysis' process. I shudder whenever I hear a project team member utter 'scope creep' because that means requirements were not properly done in the first place. I have found my work in that area makes my eventual database design work flow a lot more smoothly. In principle I am very attracted to the idea of Open Referral; however, I believe at this time we are talking more about directory standards as opposed to actually doing referrals. That's fine as long as we remember the difference between the two.
Regards,
Dale
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Anselm Bradford
Hailey Pate
Scott Schwaitzberg
--
Clive Jones
Joey Schulte
My name is Joey Schulte and I come from a comprehensive 211 called HandsOn Central Ohio. I've been here almost 2 years as a Resource Specialist (database manager, indexer and researcher of services). I come from a library background and hold a MLIS which I think help contributes to my excitement about such a project. I am a firm believer in free and open information to everyone.
A use case I would be interested in seeing is being able to look at referral/resource data from like sized cities to compare similar and distinct problems between them. I would hope to be able to glean gaps of coverage and look to other cities as a model of what programs have been successful for them addressing the needs of clients. I also see this as a great means of collaboration that is often spoken of and lauded in the nonprofit world but rarely seems to be put into practice.
I would say what I bring to the table is someone who knows the "problems" with making all of our data open outside of the organization. Many 211s are apprehensive because being the gatekeeper of that information gives them value. If you make it free to the public, would city/county/state government still see the value of the information enough to pay us for what we do, even though they can access it now for free. I am of firm belief that the data would be valuable enough that it wouldn't be an issue, but I understand people's concerns, especially those from smaller municipalities that may not have a lot of funds to throw around for a service that may seem antiquated in a lot of ways.
My MLIS specialty was cataloging so I also have a thorough understanding of classification schema, indexing practices and relevance of metadata. I, however, am not a programmer, and I do not enjoy what little coding I actually know how to do.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Joey Schulte
David Erlandson
Jarred Wilson
I have a similar experience as David and Joey, having come from a library/archives background. But before I decided to go to grad school, I was working in human and social services and in non-profit management. I'm now at Switchboard of Miami (the 2-1-1 provider for Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Collier counties), where I've been maintaining our database for about 6 months. I joined the group because I (as well as my company) have a strong interest in seeing more cooperation between human/social services providers in our community. We see ourselves as the ones who can really bring organizations together and help them maximize their reach while being mindful of limited resources. And a huge part to doing that is having the ability to share information easily. We're certainly guarded about the work we've put into collecting and maintaining (I would use the word curate if it wouldn't tick off my museum friends) the information we have, but we realize that it's no good if it's sitting in our database and not shared. So I guess my use case is broad, but I'd like to see open data in I&R work to make the provision of services more streamlined and efficient within specific communities.
I think what I can bring to the table is an ability to share and synthesize multiple perspectives. I have a fairly strong understanding of the technology behind open data initiatives, having worked with various archives & library projects, as well as some GIS applications. And I have a real understanding of what it's like to be in a small, struggling non-profit who is trying to help people but who finds itself spending half its time chasing down information for its clients only to find out that a site has closed or a service is no longer offered (I'm speaking of my previous work experience, not to mention the difficulties of working within I&R and having to track down all of this information).
A question I would want us to try to answer is how do we make this project palatable to people within I&R who do not have a technical background or understanding of the current reality open data. I have the impression (I could be dead wrong, though) that a lot of people who work in I&R come to it from a human and social services background, with a strong desire to help people, but without a strong technical background. Those of us in I&R and in other human and social service fields certainly make sure that we're providing the best technical platforms for our work that we know how, often having to rely on IT managers or IT vendors to do so. But, I don't think we always have a day-to-day hand in the technical world like a lot of other-CfA-project people might. I just think it's important to keep that in mind and make sure we figure out how to present whatever we're doing in a way that will be easily digested by those with less tech savvy than us.
I'm looking forward to this project and hope to be a meaningful part of it!
Best,
Jarred Wilson
Jarred Wilson, MSIS
Data Resource Specialist
Switchboard Of Miami
190 NE 3rd Street
Miami FL 33132
Tel: (305) 358-1640 x1148 Fax: (305) 377-2269
24-Hour HELPline: (305) 358-4357 or 211
TTY: (305) 644-9449 or 211, opt 4
http://www.switchboardmiami.org
From: OpenRe...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Greg Bloom
Sent: Mon 4/7/2014 4:29 PM
To: openre...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openreferral] Introductions thread [welcome to Open Referral!]
As our work together gradually gets started, I want us all to take some
time to introduce ourselves.
Devin <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openreferral/2cH9Ylke5zE>have
to get noodged!)
*We all want to know: *
Your experience with referral information systems, and what brought you to
join this group.
A potential 'use case' of community resource data that you hope this work
can make possible.
What needs do you have, with which others might be able to help?
What questions do you want us to try to answer?
Okay, I'll go first!
#
So. I'm originally from Miami, Florida, and have been working in the
health/human/social service sector in the District of Columbia (as in, the
fundraising, and communications of various other kinds.
I like to try to make systems work better for the people who are impacted
by them. The ways that I go about that usually involve creating space for
people to share, learn, and work together to make such improvements (or to
imagine new systems, then build them) themselves.
Most of y'all have heard my story about how I came to this particular
field, and what my vision is; for anyone new and/or interested in more
year<http://beyondtransparency.org/chapters/part-5/towards-a-community-data-commons/>
.
A lot has happened since that essay was published. Right in the midst of my
research, Google.org proposed their Civic Services schema to the
Around the time my essay was published, I convened a conversation among
Google.org, AIRS, Code for America, Aunt Bertha, and a number of 'subject
matter experts' who had informed my research. That conversation led to the
forming of this group; the development of this proposal that I've put
project.
That brings us more or less up to date. So, for some thoughts on my role
here moving forward:
My title here is Chief Organizing Officer of the Open Referral initiative,
though I picked it with my tongue planted firmly in cheek. My power is
essentially facilitative: I'm going to be synthesizing information, helping
set agendas, seeking clarification, cheering greatness, intervening in
anything that seems unconstructive, and of course, accounting for decisions
along the way.
Also important to clarify: I'm not an employee of Code for America. They
have contracted me specifically to provide services for the development of
the Open Referral community (such as this email right here). As such, CfA
and vision (and help with graphic
range of interests and perspectives. I'm always inclined to seek rough
consensus, but my prerogative is always to solicit and defer to the
A final note, on principles. In the near term, I think it will benefit this
community to articulate a set of our own principles. There are a
number of existing
principles<http://www.civilrights.org/press/2014/civil-rights-principles-big-data.html>that
However, shared principles can only truly emerge from shared experiences.
In my work, I have learned a tremendous amount from the Allied Media
<https://alliedmedia.org/amp-network-principles>*], as well as the Detroit
Digital Justice Coalition [*http://detroitdjc.org/principles/
<http://detroitdjc.org/principles/>*] -- I aspire to follow the precedents
prerogatives of marginalized people. I've also recently been trained as a
'cooperative developer,' and I find the Rochdale cooperative
be somewhat relevant (if only by analogy) to this context. I also admire
Agile<http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html>,
here. Finally, I've been studying the work of Elinor Ostrom and her
principles of common pool resource
which I believe are directly applicable to our mission here.
That's all for now! Thanks to those of you who have read this far. I'll be
nudging everyone to share their own introductions (which I assume will be
shorter than mine, unless you got a stemwinder of a story yourself, in
which case, let it loose :)
~greg
202.643.3648
Fitch, Dale K.
Dear Group,
A couple of observations based on today's introductions. But first, just to clarify, while I sometimes speak fondly of 2-1-1, I have never worked for, nor ever received any funding from, any 2-1-1 entity or AIRS in any way, shape or form. Two, my interest in I&R extends back to the early 90s when the federal government had a grant program entitled TOP (Technology Opportunities Program). By the late 90s many communities across the U.S. had "community resource directories" funded by this program. Unfortunately, I know of known that still exist. As such, when 2-1-1 came along, and offered to provide web based information and 'information kiosks' in the mall, it seemed like a new day was dawning. In retrospect, the technologies were very primitive, but they were going in the right direction as their intent was always to make the information publicly available.
From my perspective the technology has rarely been the problem. The 2-1-1 folks (at the national level) knew it would evolve and from my perspective they were fine with that. How that was implemented at the local level I'm sure was a different matter. Instead, I believe the primary problem lies with the accuracy of the data. My information systems research echoes exactly what Jarred said (I know Jarred made the following comment referencing a prior position), "only to find out that a site has closed or a service is no longer offered..." Keeping the underlying data accurate and current is not easy. David's posting highlights the other brutal reality in that someone has to pay to keep that data accurate. Then having that data "stolen" just does not work over the long term as it will always detrimentally impact community relationships.
I understand the beauty of APIs and how they can be a tremendous labor saving device, but if they are scraping data for which other people have had to pay to produce, then I think that goes by another word - theft. I fully appreciate the Creative Commons license (and have used it with some of my own products) and the API Commons <http://apicommons.org/>, but I believe those relationships, motives and behaviors must be very explicit and they must be honored.
Ideally, if we can derive a schema (e.g., schema.org) based upon a robust taxonomy (e.g., AIRS) and if we can get agencies to use this schema on their websites, and if they update that information when changes occurs, then we may go a LONG WAYS toward having a fully automated data update system. Then the API spiders can crawl all they want!
Best,
Dale
--
Greg Bloom
Derek Coursen
I understand the beauty of APIs and how they can be a tremendous labor saving device, but if they are scraping data for which other people have had to pay to produce, then I think that goes by another word - theft. I fully appreciate the Creative Commons license (and have used it with some of my own products) and the API Commons <http://apicommons.org/>, but I believe those relationships, motives and behaviors must be very explicit and they must be honored.
Steve Eastwood
Keith Lavery-Barclay
Hi
My name is Keith, I'm an Information & Referral Database Specialist with an Area Agency on Aging, Aging and Disability Resource Center.
I came into the Health and Human Service Industry by back roads, my qualifications are in Engineering, data, digital, micro processing control, software and hardware design. The reason for saying all that is I am also an immigrant and arriving here I couldn't find work in my field because no-one understood my qualifications, mine are mostly vocational, here they were looking for academic, they had the data, but not the information to make an informed decision about my abilities, and that is the difference we in the Information and Referral business are worried about, you can scream all you want about openness, but information is to data as chocolate is to ice-cream, unless what we are giving is the information the person is looking for, it is a usless collection of data. I&R have been providing this service for a long time, on a local basis, I'm all in favor of combining, we've advocated for it at AIRS for a l ong time, but to get this information costs, and someone has to pay the bill, sure we'll share our information, will you share the cost?
David Henderson
Stephanie Sanchez, CIRS
My name is Stephanie Sanchez, I am the Statewide Director for 2-1-1 Colorado.
I work for Mile High United Way.
I have been with the 2-1-1 program for 9 years.
I’ve been stockpiling all the emails and just finished reading one month’s worth of conversations HaHa
Interesting read, and it seems we are still drilling down on terminology, common needs & objectives and debating over perceptions and reality.
I agree with the challenges, not sure yet where I land on my choice of solution, so at present, I am a “lurker”.
I will close with one “perception vs reality”. Roads and libraries are not free. We all pay for them with our tax dollars. And I guess in many ways, that’s the heart of this project/topic, sustainability for the work we each do.
Stephanie Sanchez, CIRS
2-1-1 Statewide Director, Colorado
Mile High United Way
stephani...@unitedwaydenver.org
Check out the NEW Mile High United Way website at:
http://www.unitedwaydenver.org
From: OpenRe...@googlegroups.com [mailto:OpenRe...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Greg Bloom
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 2:29 PM
To: openre...@googlegroups.com
--
Burt Lum
Jim Christie
Hi Everyone,
I’ve been the Information and Referral Coordinator at 2-1-1 Big Bend in Tallahassee, FL for about three and a half years. I oversee two Resource Specialists who help maintain our program data. We use IRis 4.0. I also maintain our Intranet and Internet websites and am involved in a number of different community collaborations on behalf of the agency. My degrees are in communications and information technology. Prior to joining 2-1-1 I worked for a consulting firm mainly in the education data field (Reading First, No Child Left Behind, student assessment data, etc.). Before that I was a website/database manager for state government. I’m mainly interested in finding out more about the project, offering the perspective of a data manager for a small to mid-sized 2-1-1, and learning what I can to improve the field.
Thanks for allowing me to participate and I look forward to engaging in a robust discussion with all of you.
Jim
Jim Christie, MS, CRS
Information and Referral Coordinator
2-1-1 Big Bend, Inc.
P.O. Box 10950
Tallahassee, FL 32302
Direct: 850.617.6318
Fax: 850.617.6359
E-mail: jchr...@211BigBend.org
Website: www.211BigBend.org
Nate Falkner
Hi all,
I am VP for Strategy and Head of West Coast Ops for Single Stop, a national organization spun out of the Robin Hood Foundation in New York City.
We work with partners across the country to provide coordinated access to benefits and services (both traditional state and federal benefits and community-based resources like food pantries, legal services, etc).
Since 07 we’ve developed partnerships in about a dozen states and touched almost a million students and families across the country connecting them with resources in excess of $2.5 billion….with more than 42 million American’s living at or below FPL and more than 50% of community college students dropping out b/c they can’t afford to stay we think the opportunity is significantly greater.
Very glad to be looped in and look forward to being part of the conversation!
Best,
Nate Falkner
Vice President of Strategy and Interim Regional Director, West Coast
Single Stop USA
369 Pine Street, Suite 503
San Francisco, CA 94104
P: 415.391.7170
C: 646.919.6064
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From: OpenRe...@googlegroups.com [mailto:OpenRe...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jim Christie
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 10:13 AM
To: OpenRe...@googlegroups.com
Cc: openre...@googlegroups.com; bl...@codeforamerica.org
--
Benjamin Y Clark
On Monday, April 7, 2014 4:29:10 PM UTC-4, Greg Bloom wrote:
aa...@geauxpoint.com
I’m very excited to be participating in the Open Referral project. As some of you may know, I have been promoting integration in I&R for quite some time. From my long experience in the software industry, it is has always been clear to me that the technology is critical in I&R.
I have been involved with most of the integration work in I&R thus far. However, the industry still has a long way to go. AIRS has been driving the process, and I have supported the organization as much I have been able. I started a consulting practice in 2008 and have strived to deliver strong solutions to clients across the I&R space and beyond.
So far, progress has been intermittent and there is no definite path to completion. I have always believed that in order for timely progress to be made with integration, the initiative would need a large “dose” of leadership.
With the introduction of the Open Referral initiative entrance in I&R, the reality of integration has become tangible. I think that some of the work I have completed toward the initiative can be put to use for this group's purposes. For example, I custom-built a Saleforce.com information-management system for Help Me Grow that generated considerable buzz in the network. I was invited to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system in front of several Help Me Grow executives, and the platform was well received. I believe this kind of success can be re-created for all of I&R.
My observations regarding the I&R environment are shaped from years experience performing integration in the software industry. I worked at NetSuite for more than three years managing their SaaS integration strategy. Additionally, I have completed 200 enterprise-level and non-profit Salesforce implementations.
In light of this experience, I have given considerable thought to how integration in I&R might play out and what the path to success would be. I believe that the first steps would be to identify use-cases for integration within I&R, and have already begun work to identify these. Afterward, there are numerous paths to success worth discussing.
Now that integration in I&R has become imminent rather than eventual, I wish to support the initiative as much as possible. Look forward to collaborating with you all!
Regards,
Aaron
Aaron G. Blackledge
Lead Strategist
GeauxPoint
Kathy Kelly
stev...@west.cmu.edu
This project looks interesting as another domain that needs to interoperate among many data sources, and a neutral ontology to guide that interoperation could be a very good approach. Greg has mentioned that schema.org might be a useful integrating ontology, and I agree with him on that. The kinds of tools I use are OWL modeling tools such as TopBraid Composer (mostly) and sometimes Protege. These allow modeling as well as reasoning over the models. Given the need and the time, I could try some of these tools on this project's data.
My background is 27 years at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) working on - you guessed it - standards; then 5 years free-lancing and working part time at Carnegie Mellon University way out here in California (yep, we have a campus at Moffett Field, where NASA Ames is located). Have also dabbled in disaster management data interoperability, although the first responder community is very far away from considering ontologies in their operational work.
I'm looking forward to learning more about what has already been done here, and what is planned for the future.
- Steve
Cat Dwyer
Cathleen Dwyer, CRS, CIRS
www.CDKConsulting.com
Unlock your potential...
914-629-4972
Aaron Pikcilingis
Chris Mattmann
A bit about who you are.
A potential 'use case' of community resource data that you hope this work can make possible.
AND please share at least one or two of the following:
What are some resources you can bring to the table?
What needs do you have, with which others might be able to help?
What questions do you want us to try to answer?