A New Kresge Grant and a Renewed Commitment to Equity and Interoperability

By Daniel Stein, President, Stewards of Change Institute and Co-P.I., NIC   Support for any nonprofit organization, at its core, is about belief. Belief that the organization has the right vision, the right approach, the right people to get the job done. So when we learned this week that the Kresge Foundation is awarding a […]

Creating a Roadmap to Navigate the Maze of HHS Services

By Mary-Sara Jones, IBM Navigating government programs is difficult. I had been trying to support my father as he aged and his needs increased. He lived in another state, so I spent an incredible amount of time online and on the phone trying to understand what services were available and what was required for him […]

SOCI Embarks on Major New Project in CA, Forms New Collaborations

By Daniel Stein, President, SOC Institute, and Co-P.I., National Interoperability Collaborative   “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin The founders of Stewards of Change (including yours truly) didn’t know about that Benjamin Franklin quote when we launched our startup in 2004; intuitively, however, […]

When It Comes to Collaboration, Sectors Emphasize Technical Aspects Over Cultural Ones

In a review of technical documents and toolkits on interoperability, what we found was almost as interesting as what we didn’t. By Margo Edmunds, Ph.D., Vice President for Evidence Generation and Translation, AcademyHealth All across the country, health and human services programs are making connections to provide more coordinated approaches to improving health and well-being in […]

Government Should Not be a Vending Machine: The Role of Civic Tech

I recently attended the Community Information Exchange Summit, presented by 2–1–1 San Diego. Over 350 people from across North America gathered to discuss citizen-centric service delivery and bridging health and social services to build strong, thriving communities. At the center of the event was the story of 2–1–1 San Diego and its community information exchange […]

The Silicon Valley Regional Data Trust: Putting the Last Word First

With less than two weeks to go before the National Interoperability Collaborative’s first major event – “A Symposium in the NIC of Time: Advancing Information-Sharing in California and Beyond” – we’ve been giving considerable thought to how best to present our work at the Silicon Valley Data Trust (SVRDT) to the symposium’s attendees. The fact […]

Preventing the Next School Shooting: Information-Sharing Could Play a Key Role

There is every reason to believe that keeping guns away from people who are violent and have anti-social tendencies will, at the very least, reduce the number of mass-shooting fatalities.  It can be logically concluded that steps like universal background checks would have the desired effect.  However much we would all be elated to find […]

Weathering the Storm: Interoperability’s Role in Shaping a Better Future

As I’m sure was the case for nearly everyone in our country and beyond, watching the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey provided a chilling reminder of how vulnerable we all can be to forces beyond our control. At the same time, seeing the concerted — and often heroic — efforts to help the people of […]