Communities | HMIS Vision/Mission/Goals/Benefits


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Ohio Balance of State Homeless Management Information System

Vision
Ohio’s Balance of State HMIS is a rigorous, thorough and ongoing tool for collecting and disseminating information about the needs of persons experiencing homelessness and the continuum of care of services and housing available to persons experiencing a housing crisis.
 
Mission
HMIS provides quality, timely, accurate, essential information to improve service planning for people who are experiencing homelessness.
 
Goals
   
 
  • Participating providers will be able to replace some manual processes with automated processes.
 
  • Participating providers will be able to use the HMIS to meet all current external homeless reporting requirements from HUD and non-HUD sources.
  • Providers will be able to use the HMIS with minimal impact on current automated systems (Implementation).
  • HMIS will comply with all state and federal requirements regarding client/consumer confidentiality and data security (HIPAA, etc.) (Implementation and Future).
  • The community will have timely, credible, quality data about services and people who are homeless (Implementation and Ongoing).
   
Benefits
For the men, women and children experiencing homelessness:
  • Automated programmatic reporting;
  • Decrease in duplicative intakes and assessments;
  • Potential linkage to other service delivery systems in the future;
  • Speedy access to needed services and housing; and
  • Automated determination of benefit eligibility.
For the providers, program managers, and agency directors:
  • Automated programmatic reporting;
  • Automated tracking of client outcomes;
  • Improved internal and external data;
  • Improved ability to understand clients’ needs;
  • Improved client tracking;
  • Potential to streamline referral processes;
  • Potential to strengthened partnerships through participation; and
  • Meet HUD reporting requirements.
For public policy makers and advocates:
  • Improved information about system and system needs for funding, decision-making and policy;
  • Improve information for HUD SuperNOFA Exhibit 1 and other funding applications;
  • Improved ability to identify and quantify gaps in the system;
  • Improved ability to gauge the extent and scope of homeless; and
  • Potential for strengthened partnership among components of the community system.
For the general community:
  • Better information about people who are experiencing homelessness, the causes and the trends of homelessness, and future needs of people experiencing a housing crisis. HMIS will help the general community to better plan for affordable housing and support for people who are at-risk of becoming or returning to homelessness.
  • Better information about housing and support needs will enable interested parties to better market these needs to potential funders and policymakers.