Our guest speaker, Amodha Ratnayeke, Online Applications Manager at Infoxchange, explained that it is a not-for-profit social enterprise that has delivered technology for social justice for over 25 years.
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The organisation works with community, government and corporate partners to solve family violence, homelessness, mental health and issues facing people with disabilities, the elderly, Aboriginal, Maori and Pasifika communities. Infoxchange believes that no-one should be left behind in today’s digital world, so it teaches disadvantaged communities how to function with technology and connects to over 360,000 services listed across Australia.
Three years ago, Infoxchange gained a grant from Google to develop a data tool that would provide insights into the supply and demand of services across Australia, such as housing, food, health and more. The idea was based on the fact that 85% of homeless people have access to mobile phones and most of these are smart phones.
The resulting 'Ask Izzy Open Data Platform' was introduced in October 2016, and is designed as a mobile-friendly, one-stop data shop for the community and social services sector. It connects people with housing, a meal, health and wellbeing services, support and counselling, and so much more.
Originally, a competition to name the platform came up with 'Ask Ziggy', which was based on the name of a well-known homeless person in Brisbane called Ziggy. However, Ziggy did not think this was a good idea, as he might be blamed for any failures in the platform's functionality, so the name was changed to 'Ask Izzy'.
The Open Data Platform identifies calls for specific needs, so that policymakers can direct services to where they are needed most. The calls are free and anonymous. The benefits of the platform are that it:
- Identifies trends in the need for services
- Enables better planning and decision making
- Saves time by accessing data in one place
- Uses data to support research, reporting, funding proposals and more
Last year there were over 1 million searches across Australia and in August this year alone, there were 81,000. The number one recorded need in the searches is for food, followed by housing.
Infoxchange provides free phone charger cards to the underprivileged users. Donations of $15 will provide a powercard that will enable people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to connect with essential services. This is the link to donate a $15 powercard: https://donation.giveeasy.org/infoxchange/ask-izzy.
In this way, you are supporting the over 100,000 people across Australia, who are homeless each night and you can directly help connect someone with the resources and services they need on 'Ask Izzy'.
