211 Data for Service System Navigation and Planning
211 Ontario is a fully integrated provincial helpline and online searchable database to help Ontario residents find and navigate community, health, social and government services.
211 Data
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211 Ontario User Needs Dashboard
- The business intelligence dashboards below are best viewed on a desktop or tablet.
- The numbers in the dashboard represent the types of services callers are looking for or are assessed as needing
- Caller needs are tracked using taxonomy (a categorization system that is standard for 211
Service Providers across North America), and are rolled up to categories. - NOTE: The number of needs identified is lower than the number of calls to 211, as we do not currently collect information from (track) 100% of our calls. The percentage of calls tracked is 85%, and includes all calls related to priority issues and basic needs.
- To view the Business Intelligence Dashboard at full size, click here.
Resource Data
The backbone of our 211 Navigation service is a comprehensive and integrated provincial resources database. It contains information about programs and the agencies delivering them, including eligibility criteria, hours of operation, transportation and accessibility, and intake processes. All 211 Data adheres to North American AIRS standards, allowing for easy integration across different systems and platforms.
211 Ontario’s six Regional Service Providers and many data partners across the province collect and maintain high quality and standardized data about the types of community and social services (Resource Data) in their regions, and feed the data into an integrated provincial data repository.
211 maintains detailed up-to-date information on about 60,000 community, social, health and governments services for Ontario residents. These programs and services can be provided by the Federal, Provincial, Municipal, charitable, non-profit and businesses that operate in the human services sector.
Ample Labs
For example, Ample Labs, a non-profit tech company, is using 211 Resource Data to provide information to the homeless on social services around them through a chatbot called Chalmers. This app helps Toronto’s homeless people find the closest free meal service, clothing bank or drop-in program. Watch this video to learn more about the Chalmers chatbot.
Prosper Canada
Prosper Canada, St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Clinic, Flemingdon Health Centre, and Inner City Family Health Team have partnered on to create an online Benefits Screening Tool (BST) for health practitioners to help boost a patient’s income by screening their eligibility for government benefits. Together the partners will develop, implement and evaluate this online benefits screening and intervention tool which will be more effective and easier to integrate across the health-care system then current paper-based models. Based on the needs identified during the online screening process, this innovative tool utilizes the 211Ontario API to provide BST clients with ‘next-step’ referrals to local community services. The BST is currently in a “pilot” phase and not yet available to the public.
Feed Ontario and Link2Feed
Feed Ontario (formerly Ontario Association of Food Banks) expanded the reach and capabilities of their 1,200 member food banks and hunger relief organizations, by making 211’s directory of community resources available within the Link2Feed system, so that food bank staff and volunteers can more effectively refer clients to other services. Link2 Feed and Feed Ontario are piloting this new referral method that use the Open Referral standard to receive resource data from Ontario 211. Watch this video to learn more about how they use 211 data to support the foodbanks in their network.
Contact Data
Ontario residents contact 211 by phone, chat, text or email, or search the website to find programs and services that can help. In 2018/2019, 211 answered close to 300,000 calls, chats and emails from residents across the province.
211’s Regional Service Providers who answer our helpline record the individual service needs and unmet needs (Contact Data) and a few demographic details of callers/chat users where possible. This data, which does not identify individuals, can be shared with other service providers and decision-makers to inform community investment and social policy.
This is information collected by 211 Community Resources Specialists about those who contact 211 for assistance. It covers what services 211 provided referrals to and high-level demographics when possible to capture.
For more information on the 211 Contact Data, see our Dictionary of Terms.
How Rural Ontario Institute Used 211 Contact Data
The Analyzing 211 Rural Unmet Needs study provided program developers and policy makers in the provincial, municipal and non-profit sector with an analysis of 211 data to provide a perspective on how the data might be leveraged to support the delivery of community programs and services, especially in the rural context. ROI and 211 Ontario retained Dillon Consulting to assist with this undertaking. With guidance from the project management team and with input from a project advisory committee, Dillon utilized a suite of GIS tools and a process of exploratory data analysis that allowed for iterative views of the data and the exploration of a series of research questions and a testing of a variety of hypotheses. For example, data was used to analyze patterns in unmet needs – with an emphasis on rural unmet needs. Mapped 211 geography data (in contact data) to census subdivisions and also used an index of remoteness.
Analyzing 211 Rural Unmet Needs
Key Benefits of the 211 Ontario Data:
Data Curation
211 maintains comprehensive and standardized resource data about government, health, social and community programs and services in Ontario.
Resource information covers locations, hours, eligibility, services at a location and more. This data is collected by 211’s Community Data Partners and managed by Community Resource Specialists across the 211 System. There are frequent changes to community and social services that 211 and its Data Partners work hard to keep up with for accurate referrals through the phone and online.
- Evidence-Based Reporting
211 captures the services residents are looking for (Resource Data) and Contact Data when people call 211. When the above data is combined with data from other data sources such as mapping, census, employment or poverty data it can be a valuable tool for planners and decision-makers. 211’s contact data helps illuminate emerging service needs, identify resource and programming gaps and the barriers to accessing services to guide evidence-based service delivery and investment for a more responsive human services system. - Data Sharing Tools
- The 211 suite of APIs allow anyone to seamlessly search and integrate resource data, in real-time, into their online platforms, including mobile apps, chat bots and websites. 211 is also a collaborator with Open Referral which has created data standards and open source tools that make it easier to share, find and use community resource data. The goal is to increase data sharing and improve data quality to reduce the duplication and the intensity of data collection and to create value for human services in Ontario.
- We have also created a business intelligence system to visualize provincial data and better understand communicate the social service needs of Ontario residents to decision-makers. In addition, we have developed a widget for organizations to provide an embedded 211 search window on their websites.
Many organizations contribute to the 211 system in Ontario. Learn more.
Learn about how 211 has partnered with others in the sector on helpline services or data requests, click here.
If you would like to learn more about 211’s data, or would like to access it for a public good initiative, contact 211data@211Ontario.ca.
Partners Using 211 Data
211 resource and contact data has also been shared with numerous researchers and Ontario organizations exploring issues like transportation in rural communities, isolation of seniors in Eastern Ontario, energy poverty, availability of low-cost dental services, and other needs of residents in urban and rural communities. We also continue to work with partners such as the Rural Ontario Institute, Ontario Caregiver Organization, the Community Data Program, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, the United Way, and municipal planners to improve the usefulness of 211 Contact data in informing decision-making and program investments.