What is the AIRS/211 LA County Taxonomy?
The AIRS/211 LA County Taxonomy of Human Services (the Taxonomy) as defined on www.211taxonomy.org, "is a classification system that allows you to distinguish concepts, name concepts and put those concepts in order.  It is used to index and access information about a subject in a systematic, unambiguous way. In a human service context, taxonomy is a classification system that allows you to index and access community resources based on the services they provide and the target populations they serve, if any.  It provides a structure for your information and it tells people what is in your information system and how to find it." AIRS is the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems.

The Taxonomy is considered by numerous I&R professionals to be the preeminent taxonomy for human services applications. It has been endorsed by AIRS and The United Way of America.

The Taxonomy is a "living" classification system, that is, it is updated regularly to add new terms, and terms are occasionally reordered to organize them into similar groupings.

Used in ServicePoint
Bowman Systems agrees that the Taxonomy is well suited for Human Services applications, and therefore we incorporate the Taxonomy into our software.

ServicePoint utilizes the Taxonomy for two purposes; first, it is used to index Provider records with the services they offer. For example, an agency that "acquires food products through donations, canned food drives, food bank programs or direct purchase and distributes the food to people who are in emergency situations" is indexed with the Taxonomy term "Food Pantry".

Because the agency is indexed with the "Food Pantry" term, the agency will be listed when "agencies that provide food" are requested. Agencies may be indexed with numerous Taxonomy terms; Bowman Systems recommends that one term be added for each service that an agency provides.

A second use of the Taxonomy in our software is capturing client Needs. Using another example, if a client comes to an agency seeking, "a place to stay for a couple of nights while they search for new housing" the Need would be entered as the Taxonomy term "Day Shelters". When the user then searches for an agency that meets this Need they will find all agencies that are indexed with the "Day Shelter" term.

Using the Taxonomy for these two purposes enables our users to consistently index and locate agencies, and to consistently capture the needs of the community, while matching clients to the appropriate agencies.

Licensing and Web Site Access
When you select a Bowman Systems' product we will work with you to acquire the AIRS/211 LA County Taxonomy license. On an annual basis we will renew your license.

The Taxonomy license permits access to the content on www.AIRS.org and www.211taxonomy.org.  When you register with AIRS a Sign-on ID and Password are created.

Up-to-Date Taxonomy
AIRS recommends that the Taxonomy remain current by updating the Taxonomy within six months of the latest release. A new Taxonomy is released monthly.

The Taxonomy changes frequently because, "In order for the Taxonomy to remain useful as a tool for indexing and accessing community resources, it needs to accurately reflect the ever-changing human services delivery system. When new services become available or when the language describing human services changes, the Taxonomy must be modified accordingly in order to meet the needs of the field (from the FAQ section of www.211taxonomy.org)."

Auto Updater
To easily update the Taxonomy into Bowman Systems databases, we have developed an Auto Updater application. The Auto Updater is triggered when a new code set is downloaded from the Taxonomy web site. After the download occurs, the Auto Updater is activated and the code set is updated in each of our databases. We down load the latest Taxonomy once per calendar quarter. Remote sites (those not hosted by Bowman Systems) require scheduled access for taxonomy updates.

Taxonomy Customization
Bowman Systems recently implemented a new software feature that allows the Taxonomy to be customized. Customization in this case is the ability to inactivate Taxonomy terms. By doing this, the term will not be available to Resource Specialists when indexing Provider records.

Why is this necessary? Some communities have found that indexing Providers with Level 1 or Level 2 terms is not an efficient indexing method. Likewise some communities believe that indexing at lower levels is also inefficient. Therefore these communities can prevent unwanted indexing by inactivating some terms.

Here is an example, a Taxonomy term is "Cable Bill Payment Assistance", another term is "Electric Bill Payment Assistance", and yet another term is "Gas Bill Payment Assistance". A community may decide that these terms are too detailed and commit to only indexing agencies that provide these services with the higher level term "Utility Bill Payment Assistance". In this example the three low-level terms may be inactivated in ServicePoint.

Please note that if terms are inactivated, they will still be available for capturing client needs. Therefore, if the community has an extraordinary amount of requests for Gas Bill Payment Assistance this Need will be seen when client Needs are reported.