Freeing client data

Companies like mine that build client management software for social service agencies should make it easy for those agencies to move from one vendor's system to another. The problem is that there are as many database schemas and proprietary binary data storage formats as there are client management software solutions. This presents two problems:

1. Moving from an old to a new database often means having staff reinput data, giving control of client data to the software vendor rather than the social service agency.

2. Since client management databases currently don't talk to each other, agencies are often put in positions of having multiple client management systems, one for their agency then any number of other systems that their funders require they enter client data into.

The solution to this problem is technically simple, and politically difficult.  Technically, the client management software industry should come together to build an open XML format to make data exchange between systems standardized.  Politically this is difficult because unlike some other industries, social service software as a sub-sector is a disorganized hodgepodge of non-profit and for-profit entities, rather than a federated association of organizations.

Without an open standard for moving client data from one vendor's system to another, social service agencies will continue to waste time duplicating data into multiple systems and will never truly be in control of their own information.

(Photo by Free Henrik Holappa)

Global warming hurts the poor

Our focus at Idealistics is on poverty reduction, not the environment.  However, there is a clear intersection between environmentalism and poverty issues.  In honor of Blog Action Day, an effort coordinated by Change.org to get multiple bloggers blogging about the same issue on the same day (this year's issue is climate change) I want to explore how climate change and poverty are linked.

The poor are greatly sensitive to changes in the price of food.  Climate change can adversely affect food production, and therefore prices.  Environmental advocates and researchers have explored how climate change may impact the poor, as was the case with a recent study

...by Purdue University researchers [that] examined the potential economic influence of adverse climate events, such as heat waves, drought and heavy rains, on those in 16 developing countries. Urban workers in Bangladesh, Mexico and Zambia were found to be the most at risk.

"Extreme weather affects agricultural productivity and can raise the price of staple foods, such as grains, that are important to poor households in developing countries," said Noah Diffenbaugh, the associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and interim director of Purdue's Climate Change Research Center who co-led the study. "Studies have shown global warming will likely increase the frequency and intensity of heat waves, drought and floods in many areas. It is important to understand which socioeconomic groups and countries could see changes in poverty rates in order to make informed policy decisions."

While my issue is poverty, if we don't take care of our environment, the poor will be at even greater risk.  Therefore by virtue of being a poverty advocate, I must be an environmentalist as well.

(Photo by lourdes272)

LA Homeless Blog and INFORuM

This morning I wrote a guest post for the LA Homeless Blog (written by Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH Partners). The blog post, titled Homelessness: Not Just Another Statistic is an introduction to some of the thoughts I express on this blog about the need for better data metrics in social services.

On October 21st, PATH Partners will be launching a website called INFORuM, where I will be a regular blogger discussing with the readership how we in the social service sector can better use data to help people in need.  INFORuM is an ambitious effort to spark a national conversation on how to address issues of poverty and homelessness.  Such a forum is desperately needed.  There are lots of great thoughts in our sector, but to-date we lack a centralized forum where high-level knowledge exchange can take place.

According to the INFORuM website

INFORuM is a community blog encouraging nationwide dialogue on the issues of homelessness, housing and poverty between advocates, politicians and the general public. By bringing together bloggers from communities across the country and nationally-recognized guest columnists, INFORuM hopes to inspire innovative strategies to combat homelessness throughout the United States.

I look forward to being a part of the INFORuM site and feel privileged to have the opportunity to engage a wider audience about the important issue of better using data to achieve social outcomes.

Mapping community needs, reaching low-income families

Our Community Resources system not only helps low-income families find social services, it also provides an ongoing community needs assessment.  All our Community Resources contracts include regular reporting of user demographics, needs, and service requests.  We recently completed a new usage report for the City of Pomona's pomonafamilyresources.org system.

In this most recent report we mapped the locations of where the requests for services came from throughout the city, as shown in the accompanying map.  According to U.S. Census data, there are greater concentrations of low-income families in the south-eastern area of the city.  We were encouraged to see that the requests for services on the pomonafamilyresources.org system came mostly from the areas we would expect based on the Census's demographic indicators.

While this may seem an obvious finding, it actually is positive, and not necessarily intuitive.  The fact that our users come from areas where there is greater need, and the data shows we are reaching very low-income families (50% of whom identified as homeless according to the McKinney-Vento definition over the summer months), demonstrates that web-based technology can aid very low-income users.

It is heartening to know we are reaching people in need.  While statistics can tell the aggregate story, the following sentence one of our users put into the system's keyword search box drives home the human element of the work we are doing

I need a place to live for my daughter and the baby on the way

In our partnership with the City of Pomona, we are not only helping those in need, but we are better collecting the necessary information to learn how to help people better.