Data at Work: Report Card on Homelessness, FCM-QLI and CIEH Maps

[Tracey P. Lauriault-2]

*This report card was released yesterday*.

Experiencing Homelessness
Second Report Card on Homelessness in Ottawa  Jan-Dec 2005
http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca/SecondReportCardonHomelessnessinOttawaJan-Dec2005.cfm 


*The data for this report card were derived from*:

/a) Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) - an
electronic records management system built for, and in consultation
with, community stakeholders. It is provided free of charge as a means
to collect information about the population using shelters while
assisting in daily operations such as booking-in and out clients, and
reporting on shelter use
(http://www.homelessness.gc.ca/hifis/index_e.asp).  *Tracey NOTE*: It is
not a great tool but it does collect data at the shelter intake. The
last time i looked data got piped directly to the city and were not
accessible by the shelter itself.  The tool does miss those that are
temporarily homeless and are staying at friends, those that were too
intoxicated to use the shelters and refused entry, and those who for
myriad reasons do not use the shelter system (squatters, etc.).  Also
not all shelters use the system thus reported numbers are a guesstimate
at best and quite probably an underestimate.  The tool was also
contested as many in the community found that it violated the privacy
issues of the homeless and at other times may have counted people
twice.  Finally these data are not necessarily available to community
groups with the claim that privacy is an issue, however, privacy related
fields can be removed before the data are released.

/b) Housing: City of Ottawa (National Homelessness Initiative) -
http://ville.ottawa.on.ca/city_services/housing/12_2_en.shtml.  *Tracey
NOTE*: the list of services, research and links are quite good, yet we
still have significant homelessness in the city.  So we know lots but
build little housing and provide few community development services to
sustain the homeless in housing.

/c) CMHC Rental Market Survey - *Tracey NOTE*: very general & aggregated
data are available from Canada mortgage and housing corporation, more
detailed data are only available for a substantial fee.

/d) Income (and Support Programs): Province of Ontario Website - *Tracey
NOTE*: not enough time in a day for a note about the province's system!

/e) the *data sources and methodology* are well described in this report
which also provides an excellent list of homelessness report cards
across the country -
http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca/pdf/Report_Card_Methodology_and_Indicators_for_ATEH_Final.pdf 
- see sections 10 - 11

   The Alliance to End Homelessness is a pretty amazing organization
   and Tim Aubry from Ottawa u's Centre for Research on Community
   Services, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa is a
   pretty dedicated and amazing guy!

*FCM Quality of Life Indicators*:
I worked the data acquisition, development, presentation and
dissemination of these indicators, and am really happy that the data are
available to you all - http://www.fcm.ca/english/qol/indicators.html .  
We (Acacia Consulting and Research) developed a survey on the topic of
homelessness for FCM QLI participating cities and the data are here -
see :: AAH5 Changing Face of Homelessness
<http://www.fcm.ca/english/qol/2004IndicatorTables/AAH5_Hmlness_Qolrs.xls>.  
The survey used to collect the data was developed with community
developers and city officials across the country and was pre-tested.  
You can review a whole whack of related data that you can download in
excel and do as you wish with them.

*Community Information Exchange on Homelessness* - I wished this project
had continued, we (Nathalie Leclerc and i) had collected some awesome
data sets from community groups and the city to make some maps and
develop a set of indicators.  
http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/mapping_CurrentProjects.htm#CommunityInformation,
you can view maps here
(http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/mapping_SocialMaps.htm) Yes i wished we had
the dineros and skill to have made these maps interactive in an open
source program! But hey not bad for a first go!

[Russell McOrmond-2]

Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
> /a) Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) - an
> electronic records management system built for, and in consultation
> with, community stakeholders. It is provided free of charge as a means
> to collect information about the population using shelters while
> assisting in daily operations such as booking-in and out clients, and
> reporting on shelter use
> (http://www.homelessness.gc.ca/hifis/index_e.asp).

   Please note the difference between free/gratis and free/libre here.
This is an unaccountable and non-transparent system which HIFIS has
refused to disclose any information on.

HRSDC denied request for source code under ATIP request...
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1035

   I believe there are considerable privacy and other problems with this
system, but without the ability to analyze the underlying policy (IE:
the source code that automates the government policy) there is no way to
know for sure.

   What is and is not accessible to various parties, whether it be
shelters, police, or various special interest groups, is entirely
unknown as the policy is unknown.  I am very happy to hear from your
note that there are parts of the community that are contesting the tool,
and would love to get connected with some of them.  Maybe they would
have better luck extracting the policy.

--
  Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
  2415+ Canadians oppose Bill C-60 which protects antiquated Recording,
  Movie and "software manufacturing" industries from modernization.
  http://KillBillC60.ca    Sign--> http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/

[Daniel Haran]

Great job Russell!

I followed the link in the FOI response to the HIFIS training manual-
wow. The username and passwords for this aren't even case-sensitive.
This obviously wasn't planned for security.

By the looks of the program it looks like it was written in Visual
Basic, and the documentation recognizes that this requires running
Microsoft Windows. Is this just a thin wrapper over Access? For the
non-software types on the list: VB is used for rapidly developing
programs on the Windows desktop. Most programmers I know look down on
VB and consider Access to be a toy.

HRSDC will not stop malicious hackers by denying Russell's FOI
request. This looks quite easily crackable. Apart from the
administrative overhead and the requirement for using Windows, this
looks like a potentially dangerous "present" by HRSDC.

Cheers,

Daniel.

On 3/2/06, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
> > /a) Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) - an
> > electronic records management system built for, and in consultation
> > with, community stakeholders. It is provided free of charge as a means
> > to collect information about the population using shelters while
> > assisting in daily operations such as booking-in and out clients, and
> > reporting on shelter use
> > (http://www.homelessness.gc.ca/hifis/index_e.asp).
>
>    Please note the difference between free/gratis and free/libre here.
> This is an unaccountable and non-transparent system which HIFIS has
> refused to disclose any information on.
>
> HRSDC denied request for source code under ATIP request...
> http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1035
>
>    I believe there are considerable privacy and other problems with this
> system, but without the ability to analyze the underlying policy (IE:
> the source code that automates the government policy) there is no way to
> know for sure.
>
>    What is and is not accessible to various parties, whether it be
> shelters, police, or various special interest groups, is entirely
> unknown as the policy is unknown.  I am very happy to hear from your
> note that there are parts of the community that are contesting the tool,
> and would love to get connected with some of them.  Maybe they would
> have better luck extracting the policy.
>
> --
>   Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
>   2415+ Canadians oppose Bill C-60 which protects antiquated Recording,
>   Movie and "software manufacturing" industries from modernization.
>   http://KillBillC60.ca    Sign--> http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>

[Tracey P. Lauriault-2]

what is worse!
It was originally developed by CMHC, then tried in the community, the
community groups did not like it, so it went dormant for a while, then
the homelessness secretariat was developed, and they took it over and
tried to fix it and the story goes on...

Hmmm! Should we tell them?  I have some friends who work there and I
could see if they would be receptive your advice.  The issue will be,
how to fix and redeploy to hundreds of shelters across the country.  
Alternatively, they could get a heads up on what not to do next time.  
Russel, is this a GOSLING sorta thing?  Anyway, i am glad ya all looked
a little further.

Cheers
Tracey

Daniel Haran wrote:

> Great job Russell!
>
> I followed the link in the FOI response to the HIFIS training manual-
> wow. The username and passwords for this aren't even case-sensitive.
> This obviously wasn't planned for security.
>
> By the looks of the program it looks like it was written in Visual
> Basic, and the documentation recognizes that this requires running
> Microsoft Windows. Is this just a thin wrapper over Access? For the
> non-software types on the list: VB is used for rapidly developing
> programs on the Windows desktop. Most programmers I know look down on
> VB and consider Access to be a toy.
>
> HRSDC will not stop malicious hackers by denying Russell's FOI
> request. This looks quite easily crackable. Apart from the
> administrative overhead and the requirement for using Windows, this
> looks like a potentially dangerous "present" by HRSDC.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Daniel.
>
> On 3/2/06, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote:
>  
>> Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
>>    
>>> /a) Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) - an
>>> electronic records management system built for, and in consultation
>>> with, community stakeholders. It is provided free of charge as a means
>>> to collect information about the population using shelters while
>>> assisting in daily operations such as booking-in and out clients, and
>>> reporting on shelter use
>>> (http://www.homelessness.gc.ca/hifis/index_e.asp).
>>>      
>>    Please note the difference between free/gratis and free/libre here.
>> This is an unaccountable and non-transparent system which HIFIS has
>> refused to disclose any information on.
>>
>> HRSDC denied request for source code under ATIP request...
>> http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1035
>>
>>    I believe there are considerable privacy and other problems with this
>> system, but without the ability to analyze the underlying policy (IE:
>> the source code that automates the government policy) there is no way to
>> know for sure.
>>
>>    What is and is not accessible to various parties, whether it be
>> shelters, police, or various special interest groups, is entirely
>> unknown as the policy is unknown.  I am very happy to hear from your
>> note that there are parts of the community that are contesting the tool,
>> and would love to get connected with some of them.  Maybe they would
>> have better luck extracting the policy.
>>
>> --
>>   Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
>>   2415+ Canadians oppose Bill C-60 which protects antiquated Recording,
>>   Movie and "software manufacturing" industries from modernization.
>>   http://KillBillC60.ca    Sign--> http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>>
>>    
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>
>  

[Russell McOrmond-2]

Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
> Hmmm! Should we tell them?  I have some friends who work there and I
> could see if they would be receptive your advice.  The issue will be,
> how to fix and redeploy to hundreds of shelters across the country.

   The same redeployment would be required for any software upgrade, so
isn't all that relevant to the specifics we are trying to get at.

> Alternatively, they could get a heads up on what not to do next time.  
> Russel, is this a GOSLING sorta thing?  Anyway, i am glad ya all looked
> a little further.

   We are generally trying to get the concept into government that the
rules used to automate government policy must be open and accountable.
It should not matter if these rules are written in legalese (interpreted
by a lawyer/judge) or VisualBasic (Interpreted by a computer), they are
simply government rules.

   I have a few ATIP ideas that I'm pursuing, with the HIFIS software
just being one that I thought could get people excited.  Why are we
trusting the privacy and other rights of homeless people to secret
government policy?

   Imagine a government bill that said:

Title: Bill C-BlankCheque
Summary: The government grants that an undisclosed private sector
company is allowed to do whatever they want with information collected
from the homeless. It will be a violation of this act to to investigate
or disclose the policy followed by this private sector company.


   I think people would be upset.  Then again, all you have to do is
call that policy "software" and this is effectively what governments are
doing every day.

--
  Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
  2415+ Canadians oppose Bill C-60 which protects antiquated Recording,
  Movie and "software manufacturing" industries from modernization.
  http://KillBillC60.ca    Sign--> http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/