Winners of the Best Human Services App Award 2020

husITa is delighted to announce the winners of the Best Human Services App Award for 2020. The award is designed to recognize outstanding software applications (app) that support husITa’s mission, which is promoting the ethical and effective use of information technology to better serve humanity. The award supports an individual, group, or organization to address a human-service problem or personal challenge. Submissions were judged by a panel of husITa Board Members and an outside computer scientist using a set of five criteria including Purpose or creating problem-solving, Sustainability of the app such as outside financial support to ensure the app will continue to grow and how the Award will be used, Effectiveness or various key milestones in the app’s development, User Value or the number of potential end-users and number of current users and how it might benefit them, and Technical Design. The judges awarded the Best App Award to Adam Bard and his team for the development of Streetlives. This app is a community built digital platform that will enable anyone in need to find, rate, and recommend information on social services in New York City. Characterized as a Yelp for social services, this app empowers individuals experiencing or at-risk of homelessness to drive system change toward an equitable data-led collaboration with providers which will improve service delivery. The app is being built as a mobile-first platform where individuals can find peer and system validated information on social services. The team has been working with nonprofit organizations and the City to improve system data and service delivery. Congratulations once again to StreetLives. The winners have also provided a brief video which can be seen below.