A National Imperative: Joining Forces to Strengthen Human Services in America (Jan 2018)

in organizational goals, policies, structures, communication channels, and even culture. Similarly, many human services CBOs specialize in a particular type of service, so people needing diverse services must rely on an array of separate providers. This specialization can be valuable, given the deep and specific expertise that is required to deliver each type of service, but it can also create barriers to collaboration. The large number of entities involved makes it difficult to coordinate a holistic approach with individuals and families. In some cases, existence of organizational siloes is driven by federal and state funding structures. For instance, specific federal funding pools are associated with specific program types, and impose different rules and funding mechanisms down to the state and local level. Organizational boundaries extend to data. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and related privacy regulations designed to protect individuals have the unintended consequence of making it more difficult to share data across the human services ecosystem and between human services CBOs. 24  Even when laws and regulations do not entirely prohibit the sharing of data, CBOs may lack the expertise or resources to create the requisite processes and procedures that would allow them to do so (e.g., to de-identify and encrypt data). The resulting web of organizational boundaries is complex and highly variable – different states and counties have different structures, different degrees of integration, and different types of siloes. This creates additional degrees of complexity, especially for organizations operating in multiple jurisdictions. Compounding the matter, CBOs can be stubbornly independent and competitive with each other. “CBOs are very hesitant to partner or merge,” according to a private funder. “In a given year, the private market tends to see over 14,000 mergers, while the world of human services sees only 50 to 60.” CHALLENGE #7 Transitioning from providing services to delivering outcomes Increasingly, funders demand that human services CBOs demonstrate impact and return on investment (“ROI”) from programs as a prerequisite for funding. One CEO from Texas explained, “Long-time funders are now approaching us to ask about the ROI of their investment. “If a study comes out showing how a program might or might not be effective, a CBO running that program can produce its own research contradicting or delegitimizing the research. There is no standardized, centralized institution for human services research”

Organizational siloes among both human services CBOs and government agencies serve as amajor impediment to integration and collaboration.

– Human Services CBO CEO, Wisconsin

42 |   A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE