Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) has become a significant data source to better understand homelessness in the U.S. Good quality data is foundational to reporting to funders, stakeholders, and communities for better policymaking and improved funding opportunities. The HMIS CSV Data Quality (DQ) Tool was developed to help Continuums of Care (CoCs) and is not required by HUD. It applies a series of logical checks to HMIS CSV Exports and provides detailed information to the CoC about potential issues found in their data.

In the future, communities utilizing their HMIS to track Coordinated Entry (CE) events and assessments will have access to an interactive CE System-Wide dashboard. This Excel workbook will pre-process HMIS CSV Exports and prepare a CE System-Wide dashboard with your local data, which is currently under development.

Accessing the DQ Tool and Providing Feedback

The DQ Tool is currently being released as a Beta version so feedback can be incorporated from communities that use a variety of vendors. The publicly available website Bitbucket is hosting the Beta version of the DQ Tool.

The DQ Tool and User Guide are available on the downloads page of the Bitbucket site. If a community experiences an issue with the tool, they can log an issue on the issues page. To submit an issue and receive updates on the DQ Tool it is required to sign up for a free Bitbucket account.

Please note that the Beta DQ Tool is supported on Windows and Windows Excel versions 2003 and later. Excel for Mac is not supported currently.

SNAPS Mailing List Subscription

SNAPS is now using two different listservs to communicate competition and program updates:

• Subscribe to the HUD.gov listserv for information developed by HUD/SNAPS regarding the CoC program, ESG program, YHDP, Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) developed by SNAPS, and any other information related to SNAPS programs and the work to end homelessness.
  • Sign up for SNAPS Competition Information
  • Sign up for SNAPS Program Information
     
• Subscribe to the HUD Exchange listserv for information and guidance produced by HUD technical assistance providers regarding SNAPS programs.
  • Sign up for HUD Exchange updates

SNAPS grantees and interested stakeholders should consider subscribing both to the HUD Exchange mailing list and HUD.gov mailing lists. Please communicate this information to your homeless organizations, local government contacts, and other interested stakeholders.