Page 1 of 1

Open source software for Community Action Agencies

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2002 11:06 am
by kcomer
I work for a CAC and I am doing alot with php and mysql to make our applications web based and move everything off of access and into mysql. I have been looking for other agencies doing things like this on the web but I haven't had any luck. I was just curiouse if anyone here was doing something like this or if you've ran across a site that is of this topic. The programs are very specialized with horrendis business rules and it would be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off. Sorry if you don't think this topic is relavent.

Thanks,

Keith

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2002 12:28 pm
by llimllib
It seems relevant enough to me, k. What exactly does a community action committee do (and yours in specific)? What stuff have you developed on PHP?

I don't work for one, but it sounds like you have some interesting stories.

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2002 5:58 pm
by kcomer
We do Community Action. It's anything from child daycare to giving rides to seniors for varios reasons. We help communities and people in almost any way possible. We get almost all of our money from grants. The software we were using was very specialized but didn't offer the options we needed. The main program I'm working on now is to track Community Block Grants. We have to be very specific about who gets what services and you have to meet certain qualifications, like income, household size, etc. Then every year the government wants these huge reports about all the demographics you've served. Age, race, schooling, family size, source of income, family type, housing type, etc. They are big and long. It used to take a month to make the reports and they werent acurate becuase they didn't have a good way to stop duplicate people from getting services. Well, now the report takes 2 seconds and its 100% accurate. the business logic behind the program is like nothing I've ever seen. It was harder to learn the rules than to code it, by far. I've also donr some computer inventory stuff and trouble ticket stuff. We have another program in the works to track children in our daycare program. It will track things like, immunizations, different skills(math, reading etc), health problems, home vists, etc... As you can see it's a very fun job and I get to puch my thinking skills to the limit. Just wish I ahd someone to push them with, or bounce them off of.

keith