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Abstract Social workers’ critical role as service navigators on behalf of their clients is expanding in the online space at a faster pace than ever before. This study examined the process and outcome of online information navigation through the lens of service providers and service users based on observational and interactive surveys. T tests and correlation results showed that human services providers demonstrated a higher capacity to visit more websites and yield more accurate search outcomes in a similar duration of time compared with general service users. Results suggest that digital literacy for navigating information online can be improved through educational opportunities. At the same time, both groups shared some common feedback on desired features for future service navigation online, including but not limited to an open search bar, search filters, instruction videos, live chat, and discussion forums for seeking mutual help and networking. The findings bear implications for formulating the roles, responsibilities, and desired competencies of social workers for online service navigation in the digital and postpandemic future. 

This article examines service coordination patterns across various service areas in Albany, the capital city of the New York State. Based on 42 in-person interviews with executive directors at various human service agencies, inter-organizational network was constructed and analyzed. The network displayed sparse and multipolar connectivity, suggesting that organizations operate in silos, with few organizations holding key positions of structural importance in the network architecture (so-called “super-connectors”). In addition, content analysis drew qualitative insights into perceived challenges to coordinate services. Several factors, both external (e.g., lack of trust or centralized communication system) and internal (e.g., lack of resources or knowledge) might have contributed to the observed structural properties. This finding suggests further examining the role of super-connectors in future research to better understand why these hubs exist and how they can work with other organizations in a cooperative and mutually beneficial manner. 

Previous homelessness research examined common pathways into homelessness, yet not much is known about how people navigate through services while experiencing homelessness. This study explored the service pathways of homeless individuals in the U.S. context, which show their connection with multiple organizations and their lived experiences of using services over time. We conducted 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews to grasp the history of service pathways, including the number of organizations, time gaps between services, and referral patterns. We also conducted participant observation shadowing with a subset of the study participants to understand how they interact with caseworkers. The length of service pathways varied, from less than five years to more than two decades. On average, participants went through at least three and up to eight organizations. Regarding service experiences, systemic- and individual-level themes were drawn for negative or positive experiences, such as strict organizational policies and the caseworker’s demeaning attitudes (negative), or supportive organizational culture and strong employee competencies (positive). The findings of this study provide deeper insights into homeless populations’ service trajectories and their experiences throughout the service-navigating process. 

A considerable portion of the US population still lacks access to technology, which causes challenges for marginalized communities to access information and services. Research on the digital divide exists in various contexts, but few have examined it in the context of human services. This study examines the impact of socioeconomic status on the methods of communication used when searching for service-related information. We analyzed both quantitative and qualitative data collected from 63 low-income and/or current human service users in Albany, New York. Education showed positive associations with smartphone ownership and personal computer use. Income was found only significant for tablet use. Non-whites were more likely to use mobile apps to web browsers compared to whites. Qualitative analysis revealed three key themes (i.e., availability, ease of use, and usefulness) as influencers of individual preference of methods. Our findings suggest that the digital divide is not merely about the income level but also educational background and culture. Human service professionals need to consider multiple channels to reach targeted populations for service delivery. Particularly, the collaboration between service providers and public libraries is worth examining to ensure the physical access and skills training for those who experience the digital divide at multiple levels. 

Human service organizations (HSOs) operate in an environment considered to be prohibitive of collaboration. To understand how HSOs come together to address the grand challenges associated with meeting human needs, we attempted to automatically construct the network of HSOs based on the information publicly available through each organization's website-the medium that people use to find relevant information to access services. Our analysis of the the complex system of relationships among HSOs in Albany, New York suggests that the network of HSOs in this area exhibits a multipolar structure with few super connectors, and strong relations between organizations that serve similar functions. We quantitatively evaluate the quality of the constructed HSOs' network from Web data based on structured, in-person interviews we conducted with HSOs. 

The relationship between local governments and the general public is being redefined by the increasing use of online platforms that enable participatory reporting of non-emergency urban issues, such as potholes and illegal graffiti by concerned citizens to their local authorities. In this work, we study, for the first time, participatory reporting data together with neighborhood-level demographics, socioeconomic indicators, and pedestrian friendliness and transit and bike scores, across multiple neighborhoods in the Capital District of the New York State. Our data-driven approach offers a large-scale, low-cost alternative to traditional survey methods, and provides insights on citizen participation and satisfaction, and public value creation on such platforms. Our findings can be used to guide government service departments to work more closely with each neighborhood to improve the offline and online communication channels through which citizens can report urban issues. 

Participatory civil issue monitoring has emerged as an easy way for concerned citizens to report problems to their local government. For reported issues to be timely processed and addressed however, accurate, online and real-time processing methods to infer issue types are necessary. To address this challenge, we propose a computational, near-real-time civil issue reports processing method to estimate the actual issue from ambiguous and/or complementary information accurately and efficiently. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach using a real-world dataset from SeeClickFix. We show that our approach is both highly accurate and scalable.