Alaska Homeless Management Information System (AKHMIS)
In order to provide more effective services to people in Anchorage and Alaska who are struggling with homelessness or near homelessness, service providers have joined together with the Municipality of Anchorage to implement AKHMIS. Although AKHMIS was initiated to meet the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) data collection requirements, AKHMIS is working to make it an attractive tool for all homeless service providers.
Annual grants from HUD and the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) fund the AKHMIS. The Municipality of Anchorage, Department of Health and Human Services, Safety Links Program manages the AKHMIS project and provides oversight, training and technical assistance.
The Safety Links Program will serve as the data host; provide individual user licenses, technical assistance and training related to AKHMIS. Aggregated, anonymous data from AKHMIS will be used to generate reports for federal, state and local funders. The effective implementation of AKHMIS will benefit homeless and near homeless persons, homeless service providers, agency heads, public policy makers and the community as a whole.
AKHMIS adopted the use of Bowman System's ServicePoint (SP) as its platform for a coordinated community-wide HMIS. SP is a secure web-based application, which can be accessed through encrypted Internet connections from program offices. SP is the most widely used HMIS application in the country.
To date 42 programs in 29 agencies have entered data into the AKHMIS. The majority of the clients served by these agencies were homeless, but a substantial number of them were near homeless people who received assistance to prevent them from becoming homeless (Emergency Services Grant, Homeless Prevention Funds for example). AKHMIS is also used to record demographic data and produce reports for Alaska Housing Finance Corporation’s Point in Time Homeless count, HUD’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report, and for two Project Homeless Connect events held each year.
Effective implementation of AKHMIS will benefit homeless and near homeless persons, homeless service providers, agency heads, public policy planners and the community as a whole.
For more information about AKHMIS, please contact AKHMIS Project Coordinator, Sandra Olibrice @ (907) 343-6592 or via e-mail olibricesm@muni.org
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