Fwd: Welcome to Open Referral UK's first newsletter

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Greg Bloom

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Mar 30, 2021, 2:43:50 PM3/30/21

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Hi folks - there's been some very exciting progress in the UK, where an emerging network of government and civil society actors are aligning around localization and adoption of HSDS. In some ways (such as LOOP, which we recently profiled on the blog) they are already breaking new ground.

I'm excited to see this movement and support it, and would be glad to connect any dots if you're interested in learning more and/or getting involved. As they develop a more formal governance model, I think we might want to revisit our own ("minimally viable process") governance framework, if only to ensure that we can maintain alignment and cross-pollination, where appropriate, among networks.

See below for more, and follow the links to sign up for updates!

~greg

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Open Referral UK <he...@openreferraluk.org>
Date: Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 12:16 PM
Subject: Welcome to Open Referral UK's first newsletter
To: Greg <bl...@openreferral.org>

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Open Referral UK Newsletter

Hello,

You’re receiving this email because you signed up to the Open Referral UK Newsletter. Thanks for joining us!

What is Open Referral UK?

Open Referral UK (ORUK) is a standard for community services data. Having a common standard for community services makes it easier to publish, access, share and use better quality data, such as for service directories.

The project is now in beta stage and the team will be focused on enabling and supporting widespread adoption of the data standard. You can read more about the project and what was achieved before the beta on Local Digital Collaboration Unit’s blog post linked below.

Achievements and updates

We’re pleased to announce that the project won an iStandUK award for being a public sector organisation that demonstrates innovation and achievement in the effective use of data and information standards to improve services. You can read more about this here.

Get involved: participate in research

We’re looking for participants to help with user testing, specifically those who have any involvement with community services or community services data. You don't have to have any prior involvement with ORUK, but if you are interested in learning more about the data standard, this would be a great way to get involved. To sign up to user testing, use the button below to book a date and time to chat with Olu, our user researcher.

Community news: Local Data Accelerator Fund

The Local Data Accelerator Fund aims to improve the use of data to support children and families. It is a funding stream of £7.9m split over two years. MHCLG invites bids from partnerships of local authorities and other local agencies that will improve outcomes for families. The core components for the bids which MHCLG are looking for are:

Exemplar data projects
Sharing skills and good practice
Partnerships of local authorities and other agencies, including universities.

You can read more about this here.

Get involved: come to our Show and Tell

To learn more about this project, sign up and join our Show and Tell sessions. We’ll be hosting our second one this week, on Thursday, 1 April from 11am to 12 noon.