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Open 211

Submitted by Brian Rice on June 4, 2011 - 12:24
Revision #9ForkRecommend a Solution
211 is a social services hotline that is incompletely implemented throughout the country. The service should be simplified to expand coverage by lowering the barriers and cost to entry, by using open, online cloud-hosted databases and bridges from existing data.
Recommended Solutions: 
Open 211, aka "Social Services Redirectory"
Example: 
  • Crisis managers should have a ready database of available services for basic needs (food, water, shelter, fuel). They should be able to broadcast the data, track the resources, and refer the public to an easy to access interface to distribute the queries.
  • People with problems in an unfamiliar or large and complex city should be able to text a service to answer open-ended queries that link them to people ready to help. Most people are not aware that help is available at all or from whom they should ask.
  • Social workers themselves should be able to consult the resource in the course of their jobs to refer people to services that solve problems the person with needs reveals in the course of an interaction.
User Stories: 
  • A person SMSs with a location (ZIP, city, etc.) and needs keywords and gets a response of 5 nearby candidates.
  • A person uses the website, a keyword search field with map to list and map results.
  • Some community with data or a volunteer sets up a new data bridge to serve data from their area.
Constraints: 
Should be cheaper to deploy and keep maintained than a full hotline operation.
Extra Credit: 
Data feed updates should propagate from across the web.
Similar Projects and Resources: 
Next Steps and Sustainability: 
The service must be marketed both to the public and to curators of social services data. The service must also be explained properly to potential adopters and partners to gain acceptance and rapidly bring new good data into the system. It should also not conflict with existing 211 requirements or preclude existing operators from giving good information.
Qualitative Impact: 
This will reduce the uncertainty people have about available services and information. Instead of ad hoc queries through existing social networks, public queries could be made to help establish new awareness of services and sites. Social services themselves would be relieved of having to manage referral information on their own, and would be able to better inform walk-in clients.

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