Detroit’s CoC has 96% HMIS adaption and complies with HUD requirements. However, HUD reports don’t meet all needs of stakeholders to drive policy, evaluate performance, identify gaps and tell local stories about homelessness. Results of SPM reports lack context. This session shows how project-level performance measures serve as an alternative to large data warehouses requiring client consent. We discuss Detroit’s process to validate SPM results, and share how administrators use project-level performance measures and Tableau reports to help Detroit understand project efficacy.

Natalie Matthews, Abt
Matt Simmonds, Simtech
Amanda Sternberg, Homeless Action Network of Detroit

HUD and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released the 2nd version of the PATH Program HMIS Manual in December 2016. This roundtable session provides the latest guidance from HUD and SAMHSA on integrating PATH data collection into HMIS and provides space for peer-to-peer sharing and best practices on topics including challenges and solutions in the collection of street outreach data, strategies for ensuring successful PATH data entry, data quality, and data use in HMIS. This session is a companion to “The Next Chapter Part II: PATH Annual Report”.

Caroline Fernandez, Public Health Advisor SAMHSA, Homeless Programs Branch
Chris S. Pitcher, Senior Technical Specialist ICF
Ryan Burger, Technical Specialist, ICF
Mike Lindsay, Senior Technical Specialist, ICF
Natalie Matthews, Associate, Abt Associates Inc.

A common homelessness prevention strategy is to provide temporary financial assistance to people facing eviction. A partnership in Chicago aimed to understand the impact of temporary financial assistance on preventing homelessness and to demonstrate the value and feasibility of leveraging administrative data to understand program impact and improve outcomes. LEO, a research center at Notre Dame, examined temporary financial assistance for callers to Chicago’s Homelessness Prevention Call Center from 2010-2012, linking caller data to Chicago’s HMIS. The discussion includes key program components enabling study of program impact; the process for accessing and linking administrative data; a summary of the evaluation findings; and implications for local and national stakeholders.

James X. Sullivan, PhD, Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), University of Notre Dame, LEO Co-Founder and Professor of Economics
Padma Thangaraj, Director of Information Services, All Chicago

This session will inform participants on how to target homeless households for appropriate housing interventions beyond the utilization of a vulnerability score and to analyze the community’s resources to meet actual need. The session will move beyond to core system policies and procedures, institutionalizing targeting practices, and analyzing community data to understand need for more effective resource allocation. Community presenters will provide perspective on current practices on the ground and making effective prioritization change within their systems.

Colleen Velez, Senior Program Manager, CSH
Stephanie Sideman, Senior Program Manager, CSH
Ana Rausch, Senior Research Project Manager, Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County

This session follows the Data Quality Assurance session at NHSDC last fall. CoCs often rely on a data quality policy or plan with periodic monitoring to ensure data quality. Having policies and monitoring data quality are key starting points, but are only part of what’s needed to ensure data is consistently reviewed and useable for system and project reporting. The Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness’ work on implementing a CoC-wide Data Quality Assurance Program provides a community example. Participants will work to complete a template/tool for their community’s plan.

Mike Lindsay, Senior Technical Specialist, ICF, International
Natalie Matthews, Associate, Abt Associates Inc.
Gerry Leslie, HMIS Project Director, Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness

The Dallas CoC developed policies and procedures for homelessness prioritization through documentation and development of a housing priority list (HPL). CoCs are challenged to develop a HPL that reflects real-time housing demand and is not ever-growing. The Coordinated Assessment System developed protocols for a dynamic HPL that holds agencies accountable to business rules. Attendees will learn about Documentation of Priority Status that classifies prioritization per HUD notices, how MDHA manages the HPL, and how performance is monitored using a community dashboard.

Cindy Crain, Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance

As communities progress on ending youth homelessness, data challenges have surfaced. This session provides opportunity for multiple café-style facilitated conversations among participants to discuss key roles for data in ending youth homelessness, integrating data into the conversation, and discussing strategies to ensure youth are active participants. Key areas of conversation include: protecting data privacy, building relationships with youth, asking sensitive questions, data sharing and receiving consent, cross-system coordination, coordinated entry, and targeting.

Amy Louttit, Public Policy Associate, National Network for Youth
Susan Starrett, Senior Program Manager, CSH

This session will support participants in understanding how to generate top tier evidence about program impact. Drawing from real world LEO case studies, participants will learn about top tier research designs, how they differ from other evaluations, and why they are important for reducing poverty and improving lives. The session will walk through the evaluation process, including setting up a program to allow for top tier evaluation, common barriers and solutions, launching and monitoring the evaluation, data analysis, and using evidence to drive decision-making and results.
James X. Sullivan, PhD, Co-Founder and Professor of Economics, Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), University of Notre Dame
Wendy P. Barreno, Associate Director, Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), University of Notre Dame

Security and privacy of client data is paramount and communities struggle to balance it with the need to rapidly house people. Communities have tested processes to maximize case conferencing meetings, finding that use of data, e.g. the active list, is the best way to ensure fair treatment based on local prioritization policies and ongoing review and engagement of people inactive, missing, and/or not interested in housing. This session highlights privacy and security practices as data populates active lists and subsequently is shared with stakeholders during case conferencing.

Sue Augustus, Senior Program Manager, CSH
Stephanie Sideman, Senior Program Manager, CSH
Alex Hartvigsen, HMIS System Administrator, State of Utah, Dept. of Workforce Services

Slides not used

Last year the City of Boston took a deep breath and embarked on developing a novel, open source solution for HMIS data warehousing and Coordinated Access to housing resources – an initiative that used agile development to realize the benefits of engineering a new system from the ground up. Today we share the successes, challenges, and future of the resulting project, both from a technology perspective, and the contributions it has made to Boston’s mission to end homelessness.

Laila Bernstein, Advisor to the Mayor of Boston, Initiative to End Chronic Homelessness, City of Boston
Jennifer Flynn, HMIS Administrator, City of Boston,
Ian Kozak, Director of Strategic Development, Green River

Coordinating accurate PIT count is a challenge even for small regions. Both Connecticut and San Antonio used paper-based counts but moved to mobile tech and dashboards. San Antonio conducted a blitz count with full canvassing while Connecticut used geographic-sampling. We will show how geospatial survey data collected with mobile devices along with GIS and reporting tools is superior to paper. We will cover the pre-count planning process, review statistical analysis required for sampling, logic used for CoC and statewide estimates, post count clean-up, and lessons learned.

Jackie Janosko, CT Coalition to End Homelessness
Eddie Barber, Simtech Solutions
Luke Leppla, Project Manager, South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless (San Antonio)
Dan Treglia, PhD

This interactive session provides a place for participants to discuss HMIS participation and learn best practices. Facilitated by the Cloudburst Group, the session focuses on increasing HMIS participation, particularly by providers not federally funded or without a requirement to participate in HMIS. There will be a focus on opportunities and barriers, including impact of federal data collection rules. The session explores merits of various data entry and participation methods (direct data entry, periodic uploads, etc.) used when bringing new programs or providers onto HMIS.

Abbilyn Miller, Ph.D., Data Analyst and SNAPs Specialist, HUD
Joel Remigio, Sr. Analyst, Housing and Community Development, The Cloudburst Group

HUD and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released an updated PATH Annual Report and accompanying PATH Annual Report Technical Specifications in 2016. This roundtable session provides the latest guidance from HUD and SAMHSA on the PATH Annual Report and builds on “The Next Chapter Part I: PATH & HMIS Data Collection” session. Peer-to-peer sharing and best practices on topics including challenges and solutions in collection of street outreach data, strategies for ensuring successful PATH data entry, data quality, and reporting in HMIS will be included.

Caroline Fernandez, Public Health Advisor SAMHSA, Homeless Programs Branch
Chris S. Pitcher, Senior Technical Specialist ICF
Ryan Burger, Technical Specialist, ICF
Mike Lindsay, Senior Technical Specialist, ICF
Natalie Matthews, Associate, Abt Associates Inc.

This is a repeat session from the Data Quality Institute. The newly released HMIS Data Quality Framework can be used to dig deep into HMIS data and make improvements to the data quality. This session provides a comprehensive overview of the purpose of each of the seven newly developed Data Quality Report tables, what the data reported in the tables means, and how users can use the information to improve their data quality.

Meradith Alspaugh, HMIS Data Lab Director
David Durkalski, Senior Programmer, The Partnership Center

This presentation describes a university community engagement project in which demographic and service delivery data are captured, analyzed, and disseminated on an interactive dashboard. In March 2016 Knoxville’s Office on Homelessness and KnoxHMIS launched a website with info on homelessness and provider performance. Administered by University of Tennessee College of Social Work, KnoxHMIS is the nation’s only university-run HMIS. We will discuss JavaScript’s use to dynamically update data and front-end presentation styling through HTML and CSS, and measures used.

David A. Patterson, PhD, University of Tennessee College of Social Work
Lisa Higginbotham, M.S.S.W. is the Program Manager and Data Analyst for KnoxHMIS
Gary Moats, B.S, University of Tennessee College of Social Work’s Office of Research and Public Service.

Learn how Utah partners with HMIS to develop and maintain new programs in HMIS. Examples include: the Community Triage Group (Coordinated Access), SSVF housing placement team, and the Housing Not Jail (HNJ) Pay for Success project targeting the “persistently homeless.” The programming includes intense scrutiny, continual review and revision, regular outcome and performance measurement, and collaboration with evaluators. Discussion will include lessons learned and what to take into consideration when determining the kind of projects to take on in other communities.

Dee Norton, Utah Road Home
Tamera Kohler, Assistance Division Director of the Housing and Community Development at the State of Utah

This panel features a dialogue between Office of HIV/AIDS Housing (OHH) staff, HOPWA grantees currently or considering using HMIS, and TA providers about possibilities and challenges utilizing HMIS for HOPWA data collection and reporting. Current guidance related to project set-up and system utilization are addressed. Topics include: project set-up, including SSO projects; pulling HOPWA data; “required” vs. “encouraged” language; client confidentiality; crosswalk between HMIS and HOPWA CAPER/APR; and working with multiple CoCs within the HOPWA EMSA.

Claire Donze, Office of HIV/AIDS & Housing
Allyson Thiessen, CARES NY
Rusty Bennett, Collaborative Solutions, Inc.
Becky Blalock, Collaborative Solutions, Inc.

This session will share experiences from a community that has implemented a community wide Social Services Information Exchange (SSIE). There is growing need for SSIEs but implementing them can be outside the community comfort zone. Benefits for SSIEs include aggregate reporting and single stop centralized intakes to services across all providers in the network. Data can be managed efficiently while helping clients receive needed services. The questions of how to deploy, how to manage and the best possible outcomes for this type of deployment will be reviewed.

Sam Coy, J.D., MBA, PhD(C)

Most communities use paper survey tools when conducting the annual Point-In-Time count of homeless persons. This methodology is often labor intensive and creates a time-lag between PIT count completion and presentation of the data summary to the community. In 2016, the Houston CoC converted to a paperless PIT and used aspects of their Coordinated Access System to enhance it. This session will cover how this transition happened, the success of the Coordinated Access System, the technology used, a summary of the process, and a discussion on the successes and lessons learned.

Ana Rausch, Houston Coalition for the Homeless

The Homeless Alliance of Western New York needed to know how many young people were homeless or couch surfing. This presentation describes the strategies, relationships and ownership of this project, protection of young people’s identities while de-duplicating data across 3 sources, and utilization of cheap and easily-available tools to conduct the 2016 Youth BeCountedWNY! PIT count. We aim to share what we learned to help other communities help their young people facing housing instability.

Christine Slocum, Research Analyst, Homeless Alliance of Western New York

This session will demonstrate how analysts went from the on-going cycle of recreating legacy reports and fielding help desk tickets for ad hoc data requests to utilizing open-source data science tools. This session features demos of web-based reports as case studies for how dynamic reporting tool can empower data users, strengthen your organization’s culture of openness, and ultimately serve to clearly and effectively visualize and quantify your organization’s impact. We will show how to build a custom interactive report on the spot.

Matt Stevens, Director of Data Science
Geoffrey Kip, Data Analyst

Does your CoC struggle translating performance metrics from the CoC NOFA into daily work? Are providers at varying levels of tech-savviness? We found the best Performance Reports are ones that providers understand with outcomes they care about and don’t need fancy coding or software. This session shows a community-wide process to create and agency-specific process to implement quarterly performance reports. We explain how translating obtuse HUD reports (system performance measures), and connecting them to everyday data entry increased our CoC’s data literacy and data quality.

Alicia Clark, Program Assistant, Homeless Alliance of Western New York

This presentation discusses how the Washington Families Fund Systems Initiative team led by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Building Changes and King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties used Tableau software to create visualizations that went beyond illustrating quantitative findings but uncovered new knowledge about homeless individuals’ experience. This work culminates in great wins for organizations. Key visualizations created by the evaluators and analysts from King County can be viewed in a publicly available website http://allhomekc.org/the-problem/#the-numbers.
John Barr, Senior Consultant, Viztric
Stephanie Roe, Project Manager, King County, Performance Measurement & Evaluation Unit

People experiencing homelessness are vulnerable, and maintaining privacy is vital. But serving clients requires data sharing across providers and between systems governed by an alphabet soup of privacy laws: HIPAA, 42 C.F.R. Part 2, VAWA, FERPA, and PPRA etc. HMIS and Human Services data professionals must navigate privacy laws to work with CoC and CES leadership, providers, and other systems. This session guides you through the regulatory framework governing HMIS and human services client data. Attendees will walk away prepared to answer frequent questions from communities.

Matt Olsson, Staff Attorney, HomeBase
Mary McGrail, Policy Analyst, HomeBase

July 2016: the Georgia HMIS Steering Committee was told their HMIS software would not sustain the requirements needed for the state. We had only 3 months because the legacy HMIS software would not be available after the 1st of the year. Each component of the migration and transition was expedited with no room for error. A project management work plan included procurement, training, planning for non-HMIS data, data warehousing, and legacy data migration. This session discusses how GA HMIS procurement, migration and transition happened in 3 months and we lived to tell about it.

Dave Totten, Business Operations Coordinator, Georgia Department of Community Affairs
Jeanette Pollock, Special Projects Manager, Georgia Department of Community Affairs