We have released an updated version of our auto-update solution to ensure that the categories through which you manage your resource directory are aligned with the ever improving AIRS taxonomy.
For more information about activating this feature switch on your VisionLink CommunityOS system, please contact our help desk.
This is part of a wide range of efforts to ensure compliance with the AIRS standards. We were the first to endorse and implement the AIRS Resource Exchange standard (to allow the exchange of resource data between systems). We were the first to support both the auto-update standard and the sixth level of the taxonomy. We were the first to support both the 2.07 and 3.0 versions of the Exchange standard as a "one-click" module, and we continually update our software to match new and evolving standards.
We believe that it is keenly useful for organizations to share a common method of categorizing community, state, and national resources, as this supports common and evolving best practice, comparable reporting and needs analysis, and the exchange of information when time is of the essence, as when a disaster may strike a community.
One of the past presidents of the AIRS board said it well: "The AIRS/211 LA County Taxonomy is to the information and referral field what the Library of Congress catalog system is to libraries, nationally and internationally. It allows all information and referral providers to speak the same language, classify information consistently, and share data locally, statewide, regionally, nationally and internationally. It is the crucial element in creating a national database in the future, that will both help identify gaps in service as well as make it faster and easier to get people connected to vital resources. It is a tool that maximizes access to community resources and actualizes the mission of information and referral."
For more information about this classification system, go to: http://www.211taxonomy.org/.