1. Using Your Data Jo Zimmer – Rural Oregon Continuum of Care
Justina Fyfe – United Community Action Network
Molly Heiss – NeighborImpact
Jennifer Ross – Oregon Housing and Community Services

2. Opening
Overview of Session
Who’s in the Room
Expectations

3. Context: What is HMIS?
A Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) is a locally administered, electronic data collection system that stores longitudinal person-level information about persons who access the homeless service system in a Continuum of Care.

4. Context: History of HMIS
Several communities in early 90s had locally developed data collection systems (i.e. St. Louis, Kansas City)
Spearheaded by HUD, HHS, and Dr. Dennis Culhane (UPenn) -the first national software prototype (ANCHoR) was deployed in 1995/6
1996 -National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (Burt)
1999 -First attempt to generate national estimates of homelessness from local administrative data (Culhane)
2001 Congress directed HUD on the need for data and analysis on the extent of homelessness and the effectiveness of the McKinney-Vento Act Programs
Developing unduplicated counts of clients served at the local level
Analyzing patterns of use of people entering and exiting the homeless assistance system
Evaluating the effectiveness of these systems
HMIS becomes eligible activity under 2001 CoC NOFA
2009 HEARTH Act HMIS participation requirements

5. Context: Who is Responsible for HMIS?
The Continuum of Care (CoC) is responsible for HMIS implementation including planning, software selection, and compliance with HMIS Standards
Project applicants must participate in the local HMIS
HUD only allows one HMIS-dedicated grant within a CoC
The HMIS Lead Agency (or grantee) is an agent of the CoC.
Manages HMIS operations
Provides HMIS administration functions at the direction of the CoC

6. Context: Data and CoC Funding
HUD focus shift into data-driven planning, strategy development, and competitive review
ROCC evolution from subjective to objective
2017 funding competition
System Performance Measures

7. Data Entry What is Data Entry What do you need?
Act of inputting/updating data in a computer system
What do you need?
Data base to input data
Staff to do the data entry
Method for pulling data out of the data base

8. Data Entry What are UDE’s
13 key pieces of information or data including:
Universal Data Elements
Name
Disabling Condition
Social Security Number
Residence Prior to project Entry
Date of Birth
Destination at Exit
Race
Relationship to Head of Household
Ethnicity
Client Location
Gender
Length of time on street, in ES or SH
Veteran Status
Adults – Adults/HoH - HoH

9. Data Entry What are UDE’s … Continued 5 Additional Date Elements
Domestic Violence
Service
Income Received (Y/N)
Non-Cash Benefits Received (Y/N)
Covered by Health Insurance (Y/N)
Reported on all Household members

10. Data Entry What programs required UDE Information Coordinated Entry
VA Programs – SSVF
HUD Programs – ESG, CoC
Administration for Children and Families – RHY
State Programs – EHA, HSP, SHAP

11. Data Entry What does this information do?
Pulls data into a variety of reports
Data Quality/Completeness
ESG Caper
CoC Annual Progress Report (APR)
System Performance Measures (SPM’s)
Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR)

12. Data Entry Who uses these reports? Agencies like Community Action
State – OHCS
Federal - HUD

13. Data Entry How are reports used? Program Compliance Number served
Was all data collected in input
Number served
Did you meet your target to be served
Scoring for the CoC Grant Application Process
HUH????

14. Universal Data Element
Data Entry
How are reports used for scoring??
2016 HMIS Data Quality
2D-1. Indicate the percentage of unduplicated client records with null or
missing values and the percentage of "Client Doesn't Know" or "Client
Refused" within the last 10 days of January 2016.
Universal Data Element
Percentage Null or Missing
Percentage Client Doesn’t Know or Refused
3.1 Name 0%
3.2 Social Security Number 9% 7%
3.3 Date of Birth 8%
3.4 Race 2%

15. Data Entry 2016 HMIS Data Quality
These are application submitted numbers
Prior to using these numbers some in the section were over 35% null or missing
Goal is less than 5% in any element
2017 System Performance Measures (SPM’s) replaced the HMIS Data Quality
Like HMIS Data Quality, SPM’s cover all programs in Service Point except one which is CoC grants only
There are 7 SPM Reports that utilize UDE’s

16. Data Entry
Clip below references UDE “Residence Prior to Program Entry”. Note that this report covers a two year period.

17. Data Entry
There are other uses of the Data Collected

18. How do you create value using your data?
Community Engagement
How do you create value using your data?
Quality
Analysis
Interpretation
Relevance

19. Quality Community Engagement
Explaining the WHY to staff doing data entry
Resources for continued support and training
Hard to grow investment if data is not good
Collecting data that is focused

20. Analysis Community Engagement Raw data not preferred
Time to distill not available
Not easy to make connections
Helps to identify outliers, surprises, gaps

21. Interpretation Community Engagement Do the data make sense?
Translating numbers into answers
Completing the picture
Holistic assessment

22. Relevance Community Engagement Link the data to the need or purpose
Connect questions to answers
Make it applicable to the communities

23. I’ve created some value in my data, now what?
Community Engagement
I’ve created some value in my data, now what?
Take it out and share it
Consider your audience
Cultivate interest in HMIS
Resource for jurisdictions

24. A Data-Driven Agency is Built on a Foundation of Quality Data
Funding competitions, performance measures, needs assessments, strategic planning, efficient program delivery – all rely on data

25. Increased Attention to Data - Reports
Providers
HUD
OHCS VA
HHS
Federal Agencies
State of Oregon Legislature
OHCS
OHCS
Legislature
HHS
DHS
HUD

26. Federal Report – ESG CAPER
Annual report out to HUD as part of the Consolidated Plan
Switch to Sage
ESG CAPER report in ServicePoint – numerous data quality tables

27. State Legislature – Data Requests
KPM – permanent housing retention
Numbers served by program
Increase in funds has led to increase in attention
Want specifics
Want more info about outcomes, not just outputs

28. OHCS - Reports Had to “up our game”
Changed reporting process to direct downloads from database
Working to create dashboards
Set the groundwork for the future

29. Questions? Jo Zimmer – jozimmer@comcast.net
Justina Fyfe -
Molly Heiss -
Jennifer Ross –