Present:

Ray Allen & Peter Friedenbach, (Community Technology Alliance): John Holland & Denise Scovel, (InnVision): Erica Mayer (Cupertino Community Services): Renee Rodriguez, (Catholic Charities): Ivis Flores, (Bill Wilson Center): Jerome Burstein (CTA): Trish Crowder, (San Jose Family Shelter): Mark Foote, (Emergency Housing Consortium): Nancy Noel, (CSA Mountain View): Amari Vorweke, Jenny Niklaus & John Reed, (Sacred Heart Community Services): Margaret Gregg, (County Homeless Coordinator): Elisa Melock & Christian Haumesser (Homebase).

The Agenda was adopted without amendment.

Ray gave a brief overview of current actions underway on HMIS throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. He mentioned that Santa Clara County was a member of the BACHIC group (Bay Area Homeless Information Collaborative), which had been formed under the auspices of the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation to foster collaboration among Bay Area counties on HMIS implementation. Community Technology Alliance (CTA) was taking a leading role in planning HMIS Bay Area-wide. With funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, CTA was assisting with the HMIS planning in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. Assisting with HMIS planning in Contra Costa County with funding from that county and with funding from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation assisting with HMIS planning in Alameda County. Additionally, with assistance from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, CTA had been asked to write HMIS planning reports for all the counties mentioned above (in partnership with Homebase) and prepare a Framework document that would facilitate collaboration between all eleven counties of the Bay Area. (the 6 counties mentioned above plus San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties.) CTA had also been charged with negotiating discounted prices for all counties interested in utilizing the ServicePoint software, and provide a menu of services that could be provided to all Bay Area counties to facilitate collaboration and effect costs savings in HMIS implementation.

Memorandum of Understanding:

Best Practices and lessons learned from communities nation-wide that were already implementing HMIS all recommended that roles and responsibilities of the implementing agency and partnering agencies be clearly defined in a written document so that no misunderstandings arose during implementation on who does what as the project roles out.

CTA had taken most of the elements of what other communities were doing and had drafted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) clearly identifying the split roles and responsibilities for a successful implementation. The MOU had been circulated 6 weeks prior to the meeting and again 2 weeks prior to the meeting to ensure adequate feedback on the proposed draft that was now presented to the meeting.

Two minor changes were suggested and agreed by all present. CTA undertook to incorporate the agreed changes and circulate a final copy to all participating agencies for signature by the relevant Executive Directors of those agencies.

A copy of the HUD Data Standards had been circulated in advance of the meeting and agencies had been asked to carefully study the document and come to the meeting prepared to discuss any issues or problems that the Standards may present to their respective agency. In addition, Ray mentioned that HUD had allowed a 60 day comment period (ending September 22nd) whereby communities could provide comments and feedback to HUD on any issues relating to the Standards. Ray mentioned that a conference call with the National Human Services Data Consortium (NHSDC) would take place the following day and that any comments from Santa Clara County would be passed to the HNSDC for incorporation into their combined feedback to HUD. Elisa from Homebase also mentioned that HUD was hosting a Technical Assistance Conference on September 17th in San Francisco and comments could be made at that conference. In addition, the Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness and Housing would be meeting in Oakland on September 19th to formulate a combined Bay Area response to HUD.

Several issues about the Standards were discussed and Ray undertook to pass these comments on to the NHSDC the following day and would raise the issues at both the HUD Technical Assistance Conference and the Regional Steering Committee.

CTA had prepared a document setting out most of the decisions that needed to be taken before successful implementation of HMIS could take place. There were 117 elements in the decision making process and most of these had been discussed and decided upon during the year long planning process in Santa Clara County. Homebase would use this document as a basis for their HMIS report for Santa Clara County, which would issue in draft form by the end of September for the Technology Committee's approval at its next meeting.

While most of the decisions had been made a few decisions still remained. It was generally agreed that the outstanding decisions could not be made until HUD had finalized the Data Standards and that others would be made as implementation rolled-out. Ray circulated the Decision Timeline document (copies had also been circulated prior to the meeting) indicating all the decisions that had been made and highlighting those that still needed to be addressed.

The group agreed that the document correctly recorded decisions that had been made.

The Group had previously agreed that HMIS implementation should be done in a phased manner. 3 or 4 agencies acting as the pilot agencies with others joining the implementation as and when the system allowed and the individual agency's own workload at the time.

The following agencies volunteered to be in the first phase of implementation:

San Jose Family Shelter

InnVision

Cupertino Community Services

Bill Wilson Center

Shelter Plus Care

The following agencies volunteered to be in the second phase:

Sacred Heart Community Services

Catholic Charities of San Jose

Ray mentioned that a fundamental element of successful implementation of HMIS was the need to ensure confidentiality of the information collected and stored on the system and the absolute understanding of confidentiality requirements and laws by anyone using the system. An appropriate training course on confidentiality needed to be identified and attended by all users of the system. CTA had been unable to identify a suitable training course and sought suggestions from the group. Several suggestions were made and CTA agreed to follow-up on the suggestions.

There being no further business the meeting ended at 3.45pm.