Covid Incident Alert System-Wide Visibility is Retiring
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, HMIS system-wide visibility was expanded to allow for viewing of clients' Incidents history for the purpose of supporting agencies in COVID response and mitigation. This change applied to only certain project types. Adding the Incidents field to system-wide visibility meant that incidents beyond COVID exposure would also be shared. The statewide HMIS community agreed that while this meant potentially sharing more sensitive information (one example is being banned from a shelter), that the benefits of being able to share time-sensitive COVID information greatly outweighed any risks. But the time has come to sunset this feature.
This change was intended to be temporary, and was tied to the pandemic coming to an end. But the ongoing nature of the pandemic made it very challenging to discern how and when to revert back to the original Incident visibility settings. With this in mind, ICA requested feedback from providers last month as well as reviewed the usage data. The overwhelming conclusion was that use of this field has decreased significantly, and at this point is largely driven by a couple organizations that are primarily using it internally (not to communicate with other agencies).
Based on that feedback, data review, and thoughtful deliberation, the Policies & Prioritization Committee voted to remove the expanded visibility and revert to pre-pandemic visibility settings. This will take effect in the system on Monday, July 11.
The Incidents field will still have a Covid alert option available and end users can still utilize this function as appropriate, but sharing of that information will not be visible system-wide anymore. In most cases, that means that only coworkers within the same organization will be able to see it. If you have any questions about these visibility settings - Do you think you should be able to see something and you can't? Do you think you are seeing something that you shouldn't? - please reach out to our Helpdesk at any time.
CLICK HERE to view the Knowledge Base article that explains how to create an Covid Incident Alert.
