Meaningful Data about the Social Sector
At present social sector provider information is stored all over the place: scattered across many different systems, excel spread sheets, and occasionally still — paper files. Social Service Providers recognise that having all of their organisation information in one place would save them heaps of time and reduce risk for their organisation.
There is a need for accurate provider information which will better enable insights into the social sector.
We’ve held co-design and usability sessions with providers to help design Accreditron. This research has shown that many providers want to show how their services are funded and to tell government the real story around how a service is delivered; their challenges and strengths.
We have also heard requests for more transparency around processes with government and funders. Increased transparency means clearer expectations, processes can be better managed, and government and providers can work better together.
Social service Providers want a profile that best represents their organisation and shows how they are services are funded. That way government can acknowledge all parties involved in delivering a service, and understand and recognise the work done across different community.
The solution is a profile for providers that enables them to share their organisation information across government.
Designing the Service and Funding Profile
A useful provider profile should answer these questions:
- What service(s) does an organisation offer?
- Where is the service being delivered?
- What is the target demographic of a service?
- Are their services accredited?
- What agencies do they work with?
- Who funds the services?
- How capable is this organisation, and are they able to meet demand?
- Are there any red flags?
Funding can be distributed across the different services a provider offers.
The accreditation process addresses this challenge by creating the opportunity for organisations to list the sites where services are delivered. These are then linked to government funded contracts and non-government funding, which are then linked to the services and eventually outcomes.
This means that government and providers can use the language they want, while still staying connected to each other.
Accreditron’s Provider Services Profile
Developed design of the ‘Provider’s Profile’ showing the services and how they are funded.
Service information is split into three groups:
- Services — how providers describe what they do. Services are linked to the relevant contract.
- Government Contracts — how a government agency describes what service they are contracting, usually described in a ‘service specification’. This is often different to how a provider would describe their service.
- Non-government (Charitable) Funding Sources — other third-party organisations that provide funding.
No additional work for Providers and Agencies
Accreditron collects information by digitising the current MSD accreditation process. This makes it easier for organisations to submit the required documentation and information to maintain their accreditation status.
When an organisation goes through their regular accreditation process with MSD they provide information about their policies, services, finances and other relevant information about their organisation and the work they do in their community. This ensures a provider can continue to safely deliver their services.
The best way to collect the most accurate and up to-date information about providers is to ask the providers.
Digitising the accreditation process means Accreditron only asks for a piece of information once. When the information is saved in the provider profile by the provider, if another agency needs to view it as part of a separate process to accreditation, the provider can share this with them without all the hassle of tracking it down and sending it to the agency seperately.
Agencies then ask providers for information and the provider is inundated with the same question, worded in a slightly different way — this is the problem that Accreditron aims to solve.
It’s already here!
The provider profile has opened up the opportunity to collect information about the social sector in a standard format so it can be used to map both funded and unfunded services across New Zealand. This is something that cannot be done with the current systems.
Collecting service information on its own is not enough; it needs to be easily searchable, accurate and understandable, and real-time. See how we support searching services by using Service Tags.
Find out more at Accreditron.
