Public-Private Data Sharing
Initiatives that Improve I&R
for Everyone
John Pierce, PhD., JD, Deputy Director,
Allegheny County Dept. of Human Services
Josh Knauer, CEO, Rhiza Labs
(Formerly of MAYA Design)

Allegheny County Overview
Includes City of Pittsburgh and 129
other municipalities
• Population: 1,281,666
• Families below poverty level: 7.9%
• Median family income: $49,815
• Population served by Dept of
Public Welfare: 6.5%

Allegheny County Department of Human Services
The Department of Human Services (DHS) is a multi-
service agency that resulted from combining six
independent county departments in 1997.
Current Offices:
• Area Agency on Aging
• Behavioral Health
• Children, Youth and Families
• Community Services
• Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities
DHS serves more than 200,000 residents annually

Allegheny County Department of Human Services
DHS values consumer choice
DHS contracts with more than 400 community
organizations
These agencies provide multiple services at more than
5000 locations

The Need
Information about resources needed to be united from
many scattered databases
Consumers and their families needed access to
resource information if they were going to exercise
choice
Helping professionals, policy makers and funders also
needed access to these resources
The community needed an integrated information
resource that accurately reflected the state of community
resources and services
This resource needed to be comprehensive but user
friendly and available to all residents of Allegheny
County in real time

The Community Responds…
15 local foundations form the Human Services
Integration Fund to support data integration
activities
Rhiza Labs led representatives of the broader
community in structured design sessions.
Participants included:
• Providers
• Advocacy Organizations
• Academic Community
• Funding Community
• Government Agencies

Uniting community data from multiple sources

Import data from any format to Info Commons

Data flows to any application

Community manages its own data, changes flow to all

Information Commons in other communities
Problem:
• Nine call centers throughout state
• Used nine different IRis (Foxpro) installs
• No easy way to synchronize data
• Wanted to integrate data from other
New Jersey 211 agencies in NJ
Information Commons Solution:
• All call centers have exact same data
• Distributed editing/updates supported
• Much easier integration w/other agencies

Demonstration
http://www.humanservices.net
http://www.uwac.org
http://nj211.maya.com
http://databasin.org

Issues to consider in your community
4 Key Areas to Address:
• Governance -- local buy-in is critical
• Funders -- foundation community can be a catalyst
• Political Issues -- meeting everyone’s needs
• Technical Issues -- flexible, open platform required

Issues to consider in your community
Governance:
• Local buy-in is critical
• Grassroots initiatives are more successful
• Start small - don’t try to broker super-agreements
• Involve community based organizations from the beginning

Issues to consider in your community
Funders:
• Foundation community derives benefits from data sharing
• Better access to data helps foundations make more informed
funding decisions
• Effective I&R helps agencies serve more people in need
• Can be catalysts for participation by requiring data sharing as
contingency for funding
• If data is useful beyond I&R purposes, more opportunities
available for funding

Issues to consider in your community
Political Issues:
• Organizations want to control their own data
• Credit where credit is due is important
• Organizations want to control how data is presented (e.g.
taxonomies, website layout, search methodology)
• AIRS compliance important to some, but not all
• Bottom line: flexibility is essential

Issues to consider in your community
Technical Issues:
• Flexible, open platform is needed
• Distributed data management key
• Ability to support multiple taxonomies very important
• APIs give organizations freedom to integrate community data
into their own systems and websites

Results across the community
Career Development for Youth

Benefits of the Information Commons Approach
A way to unify community information
• Innovative database platform
• Mission critical information and referral asset
A better understanding of the forces affecting our children,
families and neighborhoods
A data-driven foundation for planning and analysis
• Get the “right information to the right people at the right time”
• Best return on our community investments

For more information:
John Pierce, PhD., JD,
Deputy Director, Allegheny County Dept. of Human Services
(412) 350-5860
john.pierce@dhs.county.allegheny.pa.us
www.alleghenycounty.us/dhs
Josh Knauer
CEO, Rhiza Labs
(412) 488-2900
knauer@rhizalabs.com
www.rhizalabs.com