Protecting Those In NeedProtecting Those In Need

Even the homeless need privacy. And at the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, which serves the Washington, D.C., area, privacy is a major concern.

The partnership wanted better ways to collect and track critical demographic information so that it can better match Housing and Urban Development grants with recipients, says Ann Oliva, programs officer at the partnership. Much of the data is extremely sensitive. Many clients suffer from disabilities, mental illnesses, or HIV or AIDS; others are recovering from drug and alcohol abuse.

Fortunately, the partnership wasn't the only agency grappling with privacy issues--so were its fellow city, county, and state members of the national Human Services Data Consortium, a data-sharing organization. This led the consortium to seek a secure way to manage case information across the various systems of each local agency's system, a move that benefits the partnership.

The consortium opted for ServicePoint, human-services case-management software from application service provider Bowman Internet Systems. While the software met much of the members' needs, it lacked one vital function: security. Bowman initially set out to integrate database encryption into the application, but it "was too much for us to do on our own," says president and CEO Robert Bowman.

The consortium's search for database-encryption tools that could be integrated into the software led it to Protegrity Inc. By incorporating Protegrity's Secure.Data, ServicePoint now lets users selectively encrypt and secure database information at granular levels.

The partnership can amass vital information without fear of violating privacy, Oliva says. "Case managers can take information on a client but lock out that information from being transferred to another agency," she says. That's vital, because most homeless people get benefits from multiple organizations. "Every agency doesn't need to know everything about our clients," Oliva says. "We can now limit information to a need-to-know basis."