Benefits of Open Referral UK
The data problem
Every community faces a similar challenge: there are many different kinds of health, human, and social services that are available to people in need, yet no one way that information about them is produced and shared. Instead, organisations tend to collect community services data in isolation from each other in fragmented silos.
This means:
- many people never discover services that could help improve their lives
- service providers spend time checking and verifying data rather than helping people
- decision-makers struggle to evaluate the effectiveness of community programmes as they don’t have access to the right information This can lead to systems that fail people and communities.
The opportunity
Using the open data standard approach is a way of gathering data that is reliable and reduces duplication of effort.
The Open Referral UK initiative brings together local councils, government organisations, voluntary bodies, funders and technologists, and focuses efforts on a shared goal: let’s make it as easy as possible to publish, find and use resource directory information.
By adopting the standard there is an opportunity
- for better use of resources by collecting information once and sharing it between partners and across geographical boundaries
- to rationalise software by sharing capability
- to save frontline workers time having to research their own information
- to ensure that progressive initiatives such as social prescribing are successful in identifying the most appropriate support and activities to keep people safe and well