Transcript Grand Lac Presentation

Harmonizing Location, Areas Served & Boundaries
InformOntario Webinar
October 20th, 2009
John Allec, CRS
Findhelp Information Services
INTERSECTION
The major street crossing closest to an
organization or program address
AIRS recommended element:
Travel Information, such as cross streets and
public transportation information.
INTERSECTION
For general, quick reference -- not for precise
location.
So list a major corner most people would be
familiar with, not the actual closest
intersection.
Leave blank where there is no site address.
For consistency, you should settle beforehand the “major streets” that
you want to include (perhaps the bolded streets on a local map)
INTERSECTION
List the north/south street, followed by the word
‘and’ and then the west/east street.
Do not use characters like ‘/’ or ‘&’ -- those can
cause technical problems.
Always include appropriate direction indicators
(York St W or rue York Ouest) even where
buildings are on the corner of a dividing line.
(Buildings on the south and east sides of a street are usually
odd-numbered; on the north and west sides even-numbered.)
INTERSECTION
Examples:
Trent St and York Blvd W
rue Trent et boulevard York Ouest
Concession Rd, 1 km west of Guelph Line
chemin Concession, 1 km à l’ouest de Guelph
Line
LOCATION
The appropriate city, town, suburb,
neighbourhood or (sometimes) region
indicating where an organization or service
is based
AIRS recommended element:
Travel Information, such as cross streets, public transit information or
other information to facilitate travel to the location.
In CIOC: ‘Located in Community’ field
LOCATION
Based on the SITE ADDRESS,
select one value (only) from the Communities
Table,
the lowest and most precise value available.
LOCATION
Where confidentiality is crucial (e.g. an assaulted
women’s shelter):
a vaguer, higher-level Community can be entered
(‘Niagara Region’, for example, instead of ‘St
Catharines’).
LOCATION
Where there is no site address listed
(e.g. for some virtual services),
try to determine if a home community is publicly
known (from MAIL ADDRESS perhaps).
If not, select ‘Ontario’ (or even ‘Canada’) for
province-wide or nation-wide services.
Choosing ‘Null’ for Location (in CIOC) is not an
option…. Records will not show up at all on
211Ontario.ca (e.g.) if any community is
specified in the search.
AREAS SERVED
The searchable value or values selected from the
Communities Table that cover the entire
catchment area for a service.
All records must have at least one Areas Served
value.
AIRS required element:
Geographic area served
AREAS SERVED
These values are used for geographical
searching on sites such as 211Ontario.ca.
But they are not be displayed to the user.
You must select one or more values (from the
Communities Table), so that every part of an
agency’s catchment area is represented and
searchable.
AREAS SERVED
If in doubt, choose a higher value. That does
mean the Areas Served values may include
more area than the true catchment area, but
that is okay.
Consider the province-wide system and be
practical and flexible.
AREAS SERVED
Code only for the ‘practical’ catchment area, rather than
what might be the formal or official boundaries.
(Formal or official boundaries must be displayed to the
user, so those are entered separately into
BOUNDARIES.
For a general hospital, for example, only code for its
surrounding region (e.g. ‘Peterborough County’), and
not stretching out into areas that surround other similar
hospitals in neighbouring regions (such as Hastings
County).
If the hospital insists they ‘serve all of Ontario’, you can
list ‘Ontario’ as text in BOUNDARIES. That will not affect
geographical searching.
AREAS SERVED
A children’s hospital, though, could be coded for
a large area like ‘Eastern Ontario’ if there are
no others in eastern Ontario. But you would
usually not list ‘Ontario’, as there are other
children's hospitals in the province.
On the other hand, the Bob Rumball Home for
the Deaf (in Barrie) is the only such facility for
older adults in Canada, so it is suitable that it
have the value ‘Canada’.
BOUNDARIES
A statement read by the user describing the
catchment area or physical boundaries within
which a service is available.
On 211Ontario.ca, for example, this is the only
catchment area information displayed (though
with the tag ‘Area served’).
AIRS required element:
Geographic area served
BOUNDARIES
The practice traditionally in Ontario has been to
usually enter something in this field.
But that needs to change. The standard is now
that in the majority of records, this field
should be left blank.
BOUNDARIES
Boundaries should only be entered:
 where there are official or practical
restrictions as to where potential clients live
and can be served, for example most food
banks. Those outside those boundaries
cannot be served, those within the boundaries
will be served if they are otherwise eligible.
 or where it is helpful to clarify that there are no
restrictions, despite a geographically-specific
name for example.
BOUNDARIES
Many services we list typically provide their
services regardless of where the potential
client is situated, as long as they can make
their way to the agency, e.g.:






child care centres
long term care facilities
homeless shelters
housing services
walk-in clinics
meal programs
BOUNDARIES
For most such services, ‘Boundaries’ should be
left blank, and no catchment area will be
displayed to users of 211Ontario.ca, for
example.
The understanding is that if there is no
catchment area specified, where the potential
client lives is ‘not an issue’.
BOUNDARIES
A big challenge for all of us is that if an agency is
asked if they have a ‘catchment area’, they often
feel that they must provide you with one –
perhaps something vague like ‘Ottawa area’.
That is typically not useful for anyone, and is often
technically not true so therefore problematic.
(They will indeed serve people from outside the
Ottawa area, as long as they can get there).
Such feedback should be clarified and ignored.
BOUNDARIES
If there is a catchment area you should alert users about,
enter any text in BOUNDARIES that best describes this.
This might be:
 a neighbourhood, town or city
 a formal or an informal region
 a large area such as ‘Ontario’ or ‘Canada’
 a set of street boundaries
 a set of postal codes
 or any other type of text.
BOUNDARIES
Crafting the BOUNDARIES text:
Be as wordy as you need to be, as this information should be
exact and thorough -- within reason. For very complex
boundaries, you can use something like ‘Parts of…’ or
‘Eastern half of Ward 21’.
There is no need to match how names are listed in the Communities
Table (e.g. use ‘City of Hamilton’ rather than the Communities
Table’s ‘Hamilton (City of’).
In some cases, the text displayed in BOUNDARIES will just repeat
the value hidden in AREAS SERVED. But you must enter both.
BOUNDARIES
STREET OUTLINES:
Where the catchment area is best described as the
boundaries of four streets, order those as north,
south, west, east, and indicate which is which:
Abbey Dr (north) to Lake Ontario (south) * Park Lane
(west) to Runaway Blvd W (east)
List street names in full with any direction indicators,
e.g. York St W.
BOUNDARIES
Be scrupulous with phrases like ‘Greater Toronto
Area’.
Many agencies say they ‘serve the GTA’ meaning
perhaps City of Toronto and Peel Region – but
then you find out they can’t send anyone to
Halton Region, York Region or Durham
Region.
Questions???
John Allec
[email protected]
416-392-4572