Interoperability and the Future of Human Services

Abstract

We are entering a period of interoperability in the human services, or the automatic global linking of information across different services and organizations. The purpose of this article is to get human service professionals to think about research, policy, management, and practice in a future service delivery system where data, information, and knowledge can be electronically exchanged and used globally. If human service professionals are to be intelligent discussants at the table when our future digital human services delivery infrastructure is planned, clear thinking about the practices, impacts, and issues of linking agency data globally is critical. Since the focus in this paper is on the impact of global data interchange, the difficult technical issues surrounding user authentication, security, and privacy are not discussed in the depth they require.

KEYWORDS:

• automation
• human service administration
• infrastructure
• interoperability