Data

Food Banks

Data should include name, address, coordinates, website address, phone number, e-mail address, hours, whether it’s accessibilite to the physically disabled, provisions available (e.g., gift cards, canned goods, produce, personal hygiene items, diapers, baby formula), and number of visits allowed per person.

Homeless Shelters

Data should include name, address, coordinates, website address, phone number, e-mail address, hours, description, services provided, whether overnight accommodations are provided, and restrictions (by sex, age, intoxication, etc.)

Mental Health Resources

Data should include providers’ name, license number, corporate ID, address, coordinates, website address, phone number, e-mail address, services provided, license type, and license start and expiry dates.

Eldercare services

Data should include name, corporate ID, address, coordinates, website address, phone number, e-mail address, types of care provided, areas served (if applicable), services available onsite, and inspection history (dates, scores, classifications).

Daycare Facilities

Licensed or regulated daycare facilities. (Facilities that are neither licensed nor regulated are inherently not known to governments.) Data should include license number, corporate ID, name, address, coordinates, website address, phone number, e-mail address, types of care provided, and inspection history (dates, scores, classifications).

SNAP Participation

The United States Department of Agriculture provides detailed information about participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In addition to bulk data, they even provide an API, with SNAP data endpoints, that has muncipal-level granularity. Note that this is aggregate data, not household-level data.

Further Reading

• Chapter 19 of Beyond Transparency, (available online, for free), in which Greg Bloom explains the problems of putting together a directory of community resources, 211, and the opportunities provided by open data.

Software and Standards

Open Referral

"Open Referral is developing common standards and open platforms for the sharing of community resource directory data—i.e., information about the health, human and social services that are available to people in need." Their pilot projects are in Washington DC and San Francisco. openreferral.org

Experts

Domain experts who are interested in open data and who might be willing to talk to you:

• Greg Bloom, the head of Code for America's Open Referral Initiative