The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are pleased to announce the release of the 2014 HMIS Data Dictionary and 2014 HMIS Data Manual. This joint release is a product of collaboration between the three agencies to update the HMIS Data Standards to allow for standardized data collection on homeless individuals and families across systems.

These two documents update the 2004 HMIS Data and Technical Notice and the 2010 HMIS Data Standards. Because this is a collaborative effort between HUD, HHS, and the VA, the standards are no longer presented in a HUD Notice format. Instead the federal partners are releasing two documents; a technical data dictionary and a community data manual. Communities must collect the data included in the standards in order to comply with each federal partner’s reporting requirements. The documents are structured so that communities can easily determine which data elements are required for each federal partner’s program. The effective date of the 2014 HMIS Data Standards is October 1, 2014. This means that all HMIS solutions must be programmed to collect data based on the 2014 Standards by that date.

The two documents released today are intended for different audiences. The HMIS Data Dictionary is intended for HMIS vendors and system administrators because it provides logic and system-level detail required for programming HMIS systems to collect the data properly. The HMIS Data Manual is intended for use as a reference for community members, HMIS staff, and HMIS users and provides less technical detail on each data element, detail on when to collect the data, which clients it should be collected for, and any special considerations or changes from the previous Data Standards.

In the next few months, HUD and its federal partners will release additional guidance and information related to these revised HMIS Data Standards. These include:

1. Summary of public comments
2. HMIS Program Specific Manuals which will provide detailed program specific guidance for each partner program required to use HMIS
3. HMIS Notices for public comment—on HMIS Governance, HMIS Privacy and Security, and HMIS Software and Data Quality
4. Training tools for the 2014 HMIS Data Standards
5. HMIS final rule