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The Beginning of HMIS
In 2001, Congress asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to require communities to develop an unduplicated count of the homeless. Congress required this for two reasons. Cities with good data systems (Columbus, New York City and Philadelphia) did a better job of addressing the problem of homelessness. And a reliable and comprehensive homeless data set was required and needed to effectively allocate federal money.
HUD needed communities to collect accurate data on homelessness in order to evaluate the effectiveness of local homeless programs. With this accurate data, Congress could appropriately assess progress toward the initiative to solve the chronic homeless problem by 2013.
To meet this goal, HUD required federally funded public and nonprofit organizations to implement a homeless tracking system. Out of this directive came the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS)Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), a computerized data collection application and storage system. HMIS facilitates the collection of information on homeless individuals and families using residential or other homeless assistance service agencies. It also has the capacity to integrate data from all homeless service providers across the state. This state data can then be aggregated nationally in order to establish effective Federal policies to address homelessness.
The Utah HMIS (UHMIS) Project is intended to assist homeless and other social service providers in Utah as they plan for and implement a client-tracking HMIS. One of the explicit goals of developing UHMIS is to gain a clearer understanding of the prevalence of homelessness in Utah and to track client-service needs over time. With a better understanding the complexities of needs that the homeless face, agencies can design a better responsive homeless service provision.
HMIS Planning Process for Utah
In 2001, Utah Issues became the lead agency to coordinate the Salt Lake County Continuum of Care’s (CoC) HMIS implementation process. The following year, Mountainlands CoC and the Balance of State (BoS) became part of the process. The Mountainlands continuum encompasses Utah, Summit, and Wasatch counties. The BoS continuum consists of the remainder of counties in Utah except for Salt Lake County and the counties covered the Mountainlands CoC. In May 2002, Utah Issues invited service providers from around the state to an HMIS Summit at the University of Utah campus. The daylong summit informed service providers of HUD’s HMIS initiative and invited providers to participate in the planning process. A follow-up summit was held in July, 2002 and Julie Hovden, HMIS Project Coordinator for Wisconsin, was invited to speak to the group about Wisconsin’s efforts. Several subcommittees were created at this conference to address the various aspects of the HMIS planning.
The Vision & Mission Subcommittee adopted the Utah HMIS vision, mission, values, and functions currently detailed on the home page. The Business Requirements Subcommittee developed a Request for Proposal (RFP) that was distributed to 18 HUD-approved HMIS software vendors. The Ethics & Privacy Subcommittee created the Informed Consent for clients and the User Agreements for those agencies who desired to share data. The Data Elements Subcommittee proposed a list of required and optional data elements that service providers would collect through the HMIS. These data elements match the proposed HUD data elements that were released through the Federal Register in July 2003. The final HUD data elements were defined in the July 30, 2004 Federal Register (for a copy of this document, click here).The UHMIS Steering Committee was created in 2003 and has led the planning process for Utah's HMIS. In August 2004, the Steering Committee designated Utah Issues as the lead agency for the Utah HMIS Implementation Project. Strategies, plans, and other details can be found in the Implementation section of this web site.
Software Selection Process
In early 2003, the UHMIS Steering Committee sent out a Request for Information to HUD-approved software vendors. In June 2003, an RFP was issued to eighteen software companies and on July 30, 2003, seven vendors submitted proposals to the Steering Committee. In August 2003, the Steering Committee met and narrowed the pool to four vendors who best meet the needs of Utah's continua. At the end of September, vendors were invited to Salt Lake City to present their UHMIS software solutions to representatives from all three continuums including service providers, caseworkers, and Information Technology people. In conjunction with the vendor presentations, representatives were also able to demo and score the four software solutions. The UHMIS Steering Committee reduced the number of suitable vendors down to two based on usability scores. MetSYS was ultimately chosen as the software vendor based on additional information requested from the two finalists.
About MetSYS
MetSYS is a Sacramento-based firm established as an extension of Pacific Management and Research Associates (PMRA). MetSYS is focused solely on the development, support, and ongoing improvement of a product that makes electronic, multi-site, client management immediately available and affordable to organizations and communities.
PMRA was founded in 1983 to provide services to support the planning and implementation of policies for cross-agency collaboration. This mission led to a number of statewide and regional projects to develop cross-agency information systems. In the course of these projects, PMRA pioneered conceptual and technical work in "continuum of care" and "one-stop shopping" before these terms had common names.
MetSYS Inc. has extensive experience in the human service field and a long commitment to a best practices approach to system development. Their corporate mission is focused on the goal of developing and supporting client and program management software.
MetSYS software is constantly improved to meet three primary goals:
- Empower clients and front-line staff with the ability to access and use resources.
- Encourage cross-agency cooperation by electronically integrating services from diverse organizations and programs.
- Provide "real-time" feedback and comprehensive evaluation of outcomes resulting from the services provided by user organizations.
These three goals are pursued within a commitment to safeguard the privacy and security of the clients and organizations MetSYS serves.
The MetSYS Client Management and Service Integration System represents an ongoing, nine-year, focused effort to make electronic "continuum of care" possible and affordable to all areas of human service.
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