Information architecture: Information commons: Service to the community starts with solid IA
✍ Scribed by Josh Knauer
- Publisher
- American Society for Information Science and Technology
- Year
- 2008
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 226 KB
- Volume
- 33
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0095-4403
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Founder of Envirolink Network and GreenMarketplace.com, he was featured in Time Magazine as a "Hero for the Planet." Josh can be reached at knauermaya.com.
H
uman services professionals struggle with significant roadblocks every day as they attempt to fulfill the needs of their communities. More often than not, caseworkers and social service administrators lack a central resource to consult for information on available service offerings. With a large number of agencies and nonprofit organizations to track, systems for managing local information can entail high costs and less-than-effective service delivery to community members in need. To remedy this challenge, the Department of Human Services (DHS) in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, partnered with MAYA Design to transform how the agency and the non-profit sector manage community information. This project led to the creation of the HumanServices.net system, which now provides a comprehensive view of the full spectrum of human services available to residents of Allegheny County. Furthermore, the system has evolved into a tool that funders and policy makers are using to better understand the impacts of services on local communities.
HumanServices.net is built on the Information Commons (www.maya.com/infocommons) peer-to-peer distributed database technology developed by MAYA Design. Allegheny County Department of Human Services and participating organizations update their own database systems, while the Information Commons extracts the public data and reformats it for HumanServices.net. Many organizations have also begun using web-based tools to keep their information up-to-date in the system. Enabling human services organizations to keep their own records current eliminates the lag time and high costs associated with centrally controlled databases. The end result of the HumanServices.net project has been a much more accurate listing of services for individuals who need them and a much more accessible, efficient and effective methodology for delivering this information. The success