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What is Open Resource Search?

For years, agencies handling public resource data have done so utilizing proprietary software, non-standard data formats, and oftentimes outdated searching mechanisms.

Open Resource Search is an open source project that embraces a standard for data formatting and uses a modern search engine (Elasticsearch) to search resource data quickly and efficiently. Open Resource Search is also able to provide results based on actual service area geo shapes, instead of just zip code matching.

This project is managed and maintained by Connect 211 and a community of open source developers.

What problem does Open Resource Search solve?

Based on our research, there are currently no open platforms that allow agencies to quickly create search portals for their service data. This has led to overspending on proprietary software and vendor lock ins. Open Resource Search aims to solve this by providing a completely open source search portal, with basic theming capabilities. This doesn't get rid of the need for a technical person, however it does drastically reduce the amount of time and money needed to get up and running with a beautiful, responsive, and fast search portal.