About

The Open Referral Initiative develops data standards and open platforms that make it easy to share and find information about community resources. Learn more about the initiative at OpenReferral.org.

Data Specifications

This site contains documentation for the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS) and the associated API Suite (HSDA).

These can be used to structure and exchange information about the accessibility of health, human, and social services. Specifically, they are used to describe the management of information about organizations, the services they provide, and the locations at which they can be accessed, along with associated details.

Our ecosystem

Open Referral’s ecosystem includes a range of working open source software applications that can be freely redeployed to work with HSDS-compatible data and/or HSDA-compatible APIs. Many of these tools can be found in our Github organization page.

Learn more about the why’s, how’s, and who’s of the Open Referral Initiative in our Public Documentation, and browse our Project Documents on Google Drive

Join Open Referral’s Community of Practice

• We are formally convened in this Google Group.

• Request an invite to our Slack team.

• Sign up for our email newsletter on our homepage.

Get in touch

Questions not answered here? Suggestions for us?

Email us! We can discuss directly, and/or invite you to join us in Slack, where we conduct weekly office hours on Fridays at 12p EST.

Site contents

Contents:

• About
• Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)
  • About HSDS
  • HSDS Reference
  • Use Cases
  • Logical Model
  • Producing and Sharing Compliant Data
  • Sample data
  • Changelog
• Human Service Data API Suite (HSDA)
  • Overview
  • History
  • Components
  • Reference Implementation
• Governance
  • Get Involved
  • Roadmap
• Design Principles
  • Related standards
  • Related Taxonomies
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • What is Open Referral?
  • Who started Open Referral?
  • Who is the audience for Open Referral?
  • How is this project relevant to me?
  • If I maintain a community resource directory — or if I partner with an organization that does — how would I get started?
  • How are decisions made about the Open Referral specifications?
  • What is the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)?
  • What is in the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)?
  • What is not in the Human Services Data Specification (HSDS)?
  • What is the format of the HSDS? Why CSV?
  • How do you address the matter of taxonomy (of types of services and situations)?
  • What if I collect important information that isn’t included in the Human Service Data specification?
  • What if the Human Service Data Specification requires kinds of information that I don’t collect?
  • What if I need help collecting this data in the first place?
  • Who has adapted this project and can I see examples?
  • Who do I contact if I need help with this project?
  • What languages is this project in?
  • If I wanted to help with this project, what is the best way to do that?
  • Is the project in active development?
  • What is the licensing on this project?
• Credits