The Open Referral Initiative: Introduction for AIRS
Greg Bloom, Chief Organizing Officer | | 202.643.3648
Frequently Asked Questions about Open Referral
Glossary
Principles of effective common pool resource management -
Prerogative to Partnership with AIRS and the 2-1-1 movement
“What's in it for us?”
So what happens now?
Next steps:
Our Hypotheses:
Questions for you:
Take notes! Ask questions.
Frequently Asked Questions about Open Referral
What’s the problem?
There are many kinds of community resource directories that compile information about the health, human, and social services available to people in need. Most face similar challenges, yet operate in isolation. As a result, their data is fragmented and redundant, of varying quality and limited use, inaccessible or otherwise not interoperable with external information systems.
What do you want to do about it?
We want to develop a common language for this data, and to demonstrate the viability of open platforms to share it. If community resource directory systems could recognize the same data language (i.e. If they share standards) then this data could be freely circulated, and the burden of producing it could be distributed. We believe this is the key to the sustainability of referral systems: if more people are using data in standard ways, it becomes more valuable to more institutions — which means it will become easier to sustain the means to produce it.
What do we mean by 'standards'?
By standards, we refer to common ways of doing things. In the case of data standards, that means a normalized set of terms and relationships that structure information.
By developing standards for the collection and sharing of such data, we can reach common agreement on concepts like meaning, structure and transfer. With such common agreements, it can become ever easier to leverage existing resources and technology, and to develop new technologies at lower cost and broader possible use.
Who is funding the Open Referral Initiative?
It’s important to note that there there are a number of different projects weaved together in Open Referral — each with shared goals, but their own funding sources.
The primary source of funding for the core development capacity of this initial pilot phase is from the Knight Foundation. In 2013, Code for America's San Mateo fellowship formed the Ohana Project, which is an open resource directory platform that the San Mateo fellows produced for San Mateo's Human Services Agency. (This 2013 fellowship was co-sponsored by the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation.) The Ohana project has since been contracted for an additional year of development by San Mateo HSA. Ohana also won the Knight Foundation's Health Data Challenge. This Health Data Challenge funding will support the Ohana team’s work for one year, as they a) redevelop their project into an open source standalone resource directory platform which can be freely re-deployed by other communities, and b) participate in the Open Referral initiative, which will generate essential feedback to guide their redevelopment.
The Open Referral Initiative itself has been directly co-sponsored by the Ohana Project and Code for America. That co-sponsorship essentially funds the work of the 'Chief Organizing Officer' of Open Referral for this year.
The initiative has also raised funding for our local teams, primarily from local funders (in California, this includes Serving California, the Kapor Center, and the California Health Care Foundation; in DC, so far our funding has come from private donors).
We are also exploring opportunities to build additional capacity that will be specifically dedicated to ensuring that Open Referral becomes compatible with the National Information Exchange Model.
Finally, in each of our pilot localities, we are supporting our lead stakeholders (i.e., health clinics, local I&Rs, etc) in their own fundraising efforts to build their internal capacity to participate in the project.
How is the Open Referral process being developed and reviewed? What is the role of the ‘Chief Organizing Officer’?
The Open Referral Initiative is an open source undertaking, meaning that documentation and artifacts are freely viewable, and repurposable by participants. The Chief Organizing Officer has ‘soft power’ to set the tone and agenda, make proposals, promote voices, facilitate compromises and encourage creative solutions.
We approach this challenge in an agile way. Rather than try to craft the entire plan up front, then have to raise all the money we need to execute what may or may not turn out as we imagined it, we are instead working with stakeholders to identify small sets of specific steps that are worth taking in and of themselves. We’ll do those things, learn from them, and do more things.
In this planning process, we synthesize input and coordinate labor from a wide variety of participants; in that synthesis, we defer to the priorities expressed by front-line stakeholders (a network of organizations and community groups that make referrals on a daily basis).
Detailed proposals for the process and structure of the Working Group and our Local Teams are available online. These proposals are currently being reviewed, and will be used as a guide for our first development cycle — by the conclusion of the cycle, they will be evaluated and possibly revised or rewritten entirely.
What is the difference between Ohana and Open Referral? What is Open211?
Open Referral is both the name of this nascent community of practice, and also the name of our draft model for a community resource directory.
Ohana is both the name of the Code for America fellowship team that developed a ‘first draft’ of this model, and also the name of the API that they developed in San Mateo county. The Ohana API will be redeveloped by the Ohana team, based on feedback from the Open Referral community, to serve as a ‘reference implementation’ of the Open Referral model.
Open211 is not currently an actual group or entity. It’s more of a concept. There was a Code for America fellowship team that built an Open211 app in 2011; the effort did not achieve adoption, and we’ve learned from it. Some participants in the Open Referral community have already developed their own ‘Open211’ APIs, and we hope this aligns with Open Referral, such that 211 systems could have an established means of communicating with Ohana and/or other systems adopting Open Referral.
Is Ohana or Open Referral trying to build a national database?
No. We recognize that this is a local problem that should entail local solutions. That’s why we’re trying to develop a viable standard that can support local communities as they seek such solutions.
Are you ‘scraping’ data?
No. The Ohana project is working with data given to them by the San Mateo County Human Services Agency. The Open Referral initiative is working with data freely contributed by its stakeholders, which includes 2-1-1 systems across the country.
However, we insist that such data can not and should not be considered private property.
We note that there are some community resource directory systems out there that are scraping 2-1-1s data (some of which are operated by for-profit vendors). Scraping 2-1-1 data (or any online resource directory’s data) is technically easy and more or less legally okay too. We disapprove of it, mostly because it makes it harder to have constructive conversations about the real problem — which is that this data is not currently “open” for machine-readable re-use. If the data were open, scraping would be pointless. (People would use it from the source, in ways that can potentially benefit the source.)
We believe that the most appropriate way to address this problem is to establish new models that ensure community resource data is produced as an open and interoperable resource. This may seem counter-intuitive at first, but making quality, standardized resource data freely available can put information-and-referral providers in a stronger position than they currently are to recoup the costs of the information side of their business. There are business models for open data — whereas we see no alternative strategy for sustaining the production of un-open data.
Aren’t calling centers important for people who might not use a computer, etc?
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, calling centers will be an essential component of a healthy ecosystem. That’s why it’s important for us to develop standards and open that can be shared throughout that ecosystem, so that there are a variety of ways to meet people’s needs.
Aren't there already standards for service directory information?
There are, but they are not designed for the open exchange of information on the internet. That doesn’t mean we are planning to ignore them and start from scratch. The work of developing an interoperable standard entails alignment with that which already exists. For the first phase of Open Referral, we have identified a core set of existing standards with which our standards aim to be interoperable. Specifically, these include:
●Alliance of Information and Referral Systems' XSD and the AIRS/2-1-1 Taxonomy
●The W3C's civic services schema, proposed through Schema.org by Google.org
●The National Human Services Information Architecture (NHSIA) which is based upon the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)
Open Referral's model (which will, at the very least, include specifications for structuring, sorting, and circulating data) will aim to establish interoperability with these standards. (This may also entail proposing the expansion of, or even advocating for changes to, these standards.)
What about the 211/AIRS taxonomy?
Good question. What about it?!
The Open Referral Initiative intends to establish interoperability between existing systems. This entails building in accordance with that which is currently in use.
However, we also believe there should be no barriers to accessing standardized, reliable, and interoperable community resource directory data. One current barrier is the intellectual property license associated with the AIRS taxonomy. We hold the questions of how to remove these barriers — especially the question of how 'open' systems can effectively classify different types of services — to be open questions.
One possible answer to these questions would entail changing the 211/AIRS taxonomy’s licensing restrictions to accommodate open source usage. Another possible answer (or another part of the same answer!) may entail the development of open tagging systems that can be 'crosswalked' to the AIRS taxonomy. There could be still other possible answers… what do you think? Join our group to discuss.
What makes you think you know the solution?
Well, we don’t yet know the solution! We’re just not going to wait around any longer for someone else to figure out. This is a wicked problem that requires a lot of different people working together to learn about possible solutions. So our prerogative is to work with those who feel the pain of these problems, because they’re the ones whose perspectives will be needed to recognize what a solution looks like.
As we say above: “For the purposes of Open Referral, the concept of ‘open data’ is itself open to some degree of interpretation. Essentially, we are asking: how should this data be open?”
Glossary
Open211: Open211 is a name that various entities and efforts have used in different times, not always associated with those involved in the Open Referral initiative. Presumably, a 2-1-1 system could describe its implementation of the Open Referral specification as ‘Open211’
Ohana: the name of the Code for America fellowship team that developed a ‘first draft’ of an open model for health/human service directory data. Ohana is also the name of the Ohana API that this team developed in San Mateo county. The Ohana API will be redeveloped by the Ohana team, based on feedback from the Open Referral community, to serve as a ‘reference implementation’ of the Open Referral model.
Open Referral: an initiative to develop a common model and open platforms (such as a database that is using an Ohana API or an Open211 API). Open Referral is also the name of the technical specification for that common model, which is designed to be interoperable between the AIRS XSD and the W3C civic services schema.
Schema: a structure for data, establishing types and relationships.
W3C ‘civic services schema’: Recently proposed by Google.org through Schema.org to the W3C web standards body, this establishes a common language for civic service data to be understood by all search engines.
API - Application Programming Interface: a set of instructions that enable a database to be accessed by external information systems in real-time (no uploading/downloading!)
Cloud: software and data can be hosted in ‘the cloud,’ a redundant network of servers around the world that ensures interoperable accessibility across devices and operating systems, including access through web browsers.
Platform: A platform is a cloud-based service that through which data is accessible in real-time to an open set of external systems — no uploading/downloading, just flow!
Data standard: commonly adopted model for structuring data. (i.e. the General Transit Feed Specification is what enables every city’s public transportation data to be accessible in Google Maps)
Applications: software that serves information to and receives information from users.
Community Anchor Institution: A community-based organization that makes referrals on a daily basis to people in need.
Principles of effective common pool resource management -
From Elinor Ostrom’s Governing The Commons
[with plain English translation shared by Silke Heifrich]
1. Clearly defined boundaries of the resource itself and the group of users that have access to it. “I clearly understand for which resources I need to care, and with whom I share this responsibility.”
2. Appropriation and provision rules are tailored to and congruent with local conditions. “We use the means (time, space, technology, and the quantity of a resource) that are available in a given context. As commoner I am satisfied that there is a fair relationship between my contributions and the benefits I receive.”
3. Collective-choice arrangements, that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process. “We enter into or modify our own rules and commitments, and every commoner can participate in this process. Our commitments serve to create, maintain, and preserve the commons to satisfy our needs.”
4. Effective monitoring in which appropriation of resource is monitored and the monitors are monitored. “We monitor the respect of these commitments ourselves and sometimes we mandate others whom we trust to help reach this goal. We continually reassess whether our commitments still serve their purposes.”
5. Graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate operational rules. “We work out appropriate rules for dealing with violations of our commitments. We determine whether and what kinds of sanctions shall be used, depending on the context and severity of a violation.”
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution are affordable and readily accessible. “Every commoner can make use of a space and means for conflict resolution. We seek to resolve conflicts among us in an easily accessible and straightforward way.”
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities. “We regulate our own affairs, and external authorities respect that.”
8. Larger CPRs (common-pool resources) are organised in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level. “We realize that every commons is part of a larger whole. Therefore, different institutions working at different scales are needed to coordinate stewardship and to cooperate with each other.”
Prerogative to Partnership with AIRS and the 2-1-1 movement
There are many people and organizations with long histories of providing resource referral to their communities. Though we hold that the time for change has certainly come, the Open Referral initiative respects these legacies and believes that their participation is essential to the success of an interoperability initiative. In particular, we appreciate that the 2-1-1 network offers many values:
Expertise: 2-1-1s and other AIRS-accredited I&Rs possess invaluable knowledge of the process of producing and maintaining community resource directory data, as well as the challenges of effectively delivering this information. Even as new technology yields new ways of producing and disseminating this information, this expertise can help us explore such possibilities responsibly.
Infrastructure and human resources: Even in a world of information openly accessible on the web, it still takes a lot of work to effectively produce and deliver this information — especially to people who may be under-resourced or even in crisis. We recognize that collaboration with the existing 2-1-1 infrastructure is the most effective and appropriate path towards a future in which this information is as accessible as possible.
Relationships: 2-1-1 is a federally-sanctioned, broadly recognized service with relationships that are grounded in local community. The AIRS network extends even further, with many hundreds of member systems across North America. These relationships are invaluable, and open standards can gain adoption through them.
“What's in it for us?”
For Open Referral to be successful, it has to help stakeholders accomplish their goals. Toward that end, we see many opportunities for participating I&R providers, including:
Open data enables distributed usage, which can drive data production costs down. As more people access this data in more immediate ways, more feedback as to its quality can be received. This input may make it easier to maintain accuracy over time.
The more data is used, the more valuable it is: the more this data becomes integrated within institutional systems, the more institutions will value its maintenance. For the validating source, this value can be claimed as revenue in various ways.