ABSTRACT
The integrated and efficient delivery of social and health services to the most marginalized sections of our society remains a difficult problem for government. At the behest of and in partnership with the South Australian Aboriginal community, this research brought together the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Neporendi Aboriginal Forum Inc., Achieve SA, the Department of Human Services, Flinders University, and the University of South Australia to design, develop, and test a participatory process to match services to perceived need. A software tool has been developed to guide a “conversation” between service providers and users that assists the service provider in addressing the more complex needs of the user. The software system includes a knowledge base that has a three-layer architecture with an interface positioned between the data and the metadata for the management of the complex structure of the concepts, issues, and resources involved. This intermediary level is the mesodata layer. The mesodata layer provides complex structures in which to store domain values and their interrelationships. The domain structures enable different orderings that form the bases of filters for enhanced querying and information retrieval. This enables the interrelationships between the factors to be analyzed and provides not only statistical evidence but also clusters or sequences of factors and their (perceived) importance to the service users. From this richer analysis, information is provided that
s ALLOWS FOR ENHANCED PARTICIPATION AND ENABLES SERVICE PROVIDERS TO hCASE manage” complex needs, s HIGHLIGHTSWHATWORKSWHYANDHOWAND s FACILITATESTHEDISTRIBUTIONANDSCHEDULINGOFRESOURCES
Evidence: What Works, Why, and How?
