Open Referral becoming the norm for sharing open information on services
Now the UK Government Data Standards Authority Steering Board has endorsed Open Referral UK (ORUK), you can expect to see it used to share open information on services by public sector and community organisations across the UK. And, if you publish such information, you need a pretty good reason not to use this data standard.
Widespread adoption of ORUK will lead to less duplication of effort and greater re-use of data so that services are easier to find through different targeted service finders. Increased exposure of service records through many different channels brings more feedback about data quality, and improves the accuracy of information over time.
What does Open Referral mean for service directories?
Local Authorities are required to publish directories of Family Information Services and typically they maintain multiple other directories of overlapping content and varying quality. Other public sector bodies provide and signpost a smaller range of services. Private, community and voluntary sector organisations, such as Age UK, describe their own services and often feature in many directories.
ORUK is designed to make service information open and shareable in a common format so it can be re-used and progressively improved by the collective efforts of publishers and consumers.
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The Local Digital Declaration, signed by 288 organisations, mostly local authorities, includes a commitment to openness, interoperability and modular design.
If your organisation has signed the Local Digital Declaration, you should be using Open Referral UK. If you’re taking service information from a government body you should be asking for it in the Open Referral UK format.
Good system design dictates separating the front and back ends of a service directory. Typically this is achieved via an Application Programmer Interface (API) between the back end server which captures and stores the data, and one or more front-end applications which consume and display the data. ORUK provides a standard for connecting the front and back ends. By applying this standard, different front and back end software modules can be interchanged and vendor tie-in is avoided.
One directory back end can serve information to several different service finder applications, each designed to address its particular audience. Services available in a “place” can be drawn from multiple API feeds and combined into a single directory.
Who’s using Open Referral UK now?
The ORUK dashboard shows live feeds from these vendors: Placecube, Public Partnerships and TPXimpact (formerly known as FutureGov) described in case studies here. It also has feeds from the open source Local Gov Drupal implementation and from the My Best Life community directory, developed by neontribe, young people and a charity collaboration led by NPC.
The Idox Directory platform imports an ORUK feed into its South Gloucestershire directory. The company says “we are looking at building a new API this year based on the ORUK standard.”
Some organisations, such as Digital CoProduction, are working on aggregators designed to merge and deduplicate API feeds from many sources.
The NHS Health Systems Support Framework (HSSF) (see Buyers’ Guide — requires login as a buyer) includes a service line for Social Prescribing that requires suppliers of social prescribing systems to read services from an Open Referral UK compliant data feed after a grace period allowed for adoption.
ORUK is adopted by the “Support” phase of the Scalable Approach to Vulnerability Via Interoperability (SAVVI) process, which will be used by the Ministry of Justice “Better Outcomes through Linked Data” (BOLD) programme to address reoffending, homelessness and victim support. It will also be used by Greater Manchester Combined Authority as part of its federated data architecture.
How does UK work relate to the international Open Referral standard?
ORUK was designed with iStandUK as a formal extension to the international Open Referral standard established in the US in 2014. The UK work results from the combined efforts of Local Digital Collaboration Unit funded projects led by Buckinghamshire and Adur & Worthing councils, Department for Digital Media Culture & Sport work to tackle loneliness managed by the Local Government Association (LGA), and countless individual contributions. The LGA’s technical partner, Porism, helps draw together the many initiatives. Essex County Council led the challenge process and represented local government stakeholders at the Data Standards Authority.
A recent upgrade of Open Referral has built in many features that were first introduced in the UK. The US and UK teams are now working together to ensure future releases are compatible and we can share learning internationally. Topics being considered on both sides of the Atlantic include: representation in schema.org. transformation to the HL7/FHIR standard used in health; techniques for aggregation of API feeds.
The UK support forum and tools to help apply the standard will be used across the wider Open Referral community.
Opening up is scary
Most organisations are wary about opening data in a readily accessible format because of possible inaccuracies. We therefore need to help one another improve the quality of shared data through constructive feedback in the ORUK community.
It’s important that data maintenance to a specified level of quality is seen as a deliverable in its own right associated with funding around community services. Applying ORUK means the data can be read and verified by semi-automated means. There’s no getting away from the need for serious data quality reviews, whether in-house or via a contracted organisation such as The Care Forum who review data for Bristol City Council against a Service Level Agreement.
More information and help
To learn more about the standard and for help applying it, refer to the Forum, subscribe to the mailing list or email hello@operreferraluk.org.
Socitm Advisory has expertise in implementing ORUK and Digital Gaps has helped lots of councils, health organisations and community groups combine services data with ORUK.
