It’s hard to see the safety net. Which agencies provide what services to whom? How can people access them? These details are constantly in flux. Nonprofits and government offices are typically understaffed and overwhelmed, and it’s often not a priority for them to push information out to attract more clients.
So there are many "referral services" — such as call centers, resource directories, and web applications — that collect directory information about health, human, and social services. However, these directories are all locked in fragmented and redundant silos. As a result of this costly and ineffective status quo:
- People in need have difficulty discovering and accessing services that can help them live better lives.
- Service providers struggle to connect clients with other services that can help meet complex needs.
- Decision-makers are unable to gauge the effectiveness of programs at improving community health.
- Innovators lack re-usable, reliable data that their products need to provide value to any of the above.
These are the sentiments local stakeholders have expressed to California Health Data Ambassadors at local Health Data Roundtables, as well as through one-on-one interviews and informal conversations in 2015.
Sacramento Health Data Ambassadors @joelrip + @roughani are leading a discovery-driven project planning, research, and analysis process. Our deliverable will consist of a web-based planning document that delineates an agile, modular approach to addressing the current state of fragmented human services data. The document will be published in this GitHub repository, incorporating feedback from stakeholders and indicating the conditions under which partners would participate.
Specifically, the goals of this scoping process are to:
- Discover and understand the challenges and opportunities within California’s human services data ecosystem;
- Unpack these challenges into discrete problem sets that enable the development of loosely coupled, modular solutions;
- Document business requirements in the form of user stories through workshops and interviews;
- Articulate an operational vision that best meets stakeholder needs; and,
- Design a high level action plan for getting there.
“Discovery-driven planning” is a project planning approach aligned with agile development. It is appropriately applied in conditions of high uncertainty and forces project managers to explicate assumptions that are core to the success of a project. The approach enables those assumptions to be tested early at the lowest possible cost, thereby maximizing the chances of a project’s success.
Through a series of interviews, we will discover and discuss business requirements and possible solutions with stakeholders, including 2-1-1s, service providers, funders, public agencies, and end users. Analysis of this data will ensure that it is correctly incorporated into the functionality required for the pilot project.