Government agencies
State health and human services, corrections, workforce, public health. CIE is the connective layer across the programs you already administer.
Three real-world journeys
Pick a use case. Pick a view.
See what's at stake — and what good looks like.
Three people. Three scenarios. Three views per person — what their journey looks like under today's fragmented system, what it looks like with a working Community Information Exchange, and the kind of outcomes a community could measure when one is in place.
Day 1 — Marcus is released. The system isn't ready for him.
Each service Marcus needs is its own fresh first impression. He retells his story at every door. Some doors don't open. Some open onto wait lists. Most have no idea whether the last referral worked.
Marcus returns to the same neighborhood, the same friends, the same circumstances. Within months, he is in trouble again — not because he didn't try, but because the system around him offered him no purchase. The system did not fail because no one tried. It failed because the trying wasn't connected.
- Story retold 7 times in 3 weeks
- DMV appointment missed — bus didn't run Saturday
- Housing referral disappeared — no follow-up
- Behavioral health: 6-week wait list
- Phone-program number disconnected for 2 years
- Re-entry coach handling 47 active cases
- No one tracking whether he got housing
- Marcus has no record of what's been done for him
Day 1 — Marcus is released. The network is ready for him.
A coach is assigned the same day. The first conversation captures everything once. From there, every handoff is tracked from start to documented outcome.
Stable housing. Employed. Family contact restored. Healthcare managed. The same Marcus, in a system that connected around him.
- Day 1: Temporary shelter — placed.
- Day 1: Re-entry coach assigned — matched.
- Day 3: DMV — replacement ID — scheduled.
- Day 5: Cell phone program — secured.
- Day 7: Bank account — opened.
- Day 10: Healthcare appointment — hypertension — kept.
- Day 14: Behavioral health screening — completed.
- Day 21: Workforce program enrollment — active.
- Day 45: Permanent housing placement — moved in.
- Day 60: First paycheck — received.
Illustrative example outcomes a community could see when a CIE is working well
When the network connects, here's what a community can measure.
- ~70%Closed-loop referral completion
Roughly seven in ten referrals reach a documented outcome — actual housing secured, an actual ID obtained, an actual healthcare appointment kept — instead of disappearing into a paper trail.
- Under 10 daysMedian time from release to first stable handoff
The difference between someone like Marcus stabilizing in the first week, or losing the first month to confusion.
- 3xIncrease in services successfully bundled per person
A returning person leaves the network with the IDs, the housing, the bank account, the coach, and the job referral — together — rather than chasing each one separately.
- Over 90%Of consents granted are honored across the network
Privacy stops being a checkbox. It becomes the reason the next person feels safe entering the network at all.
Recidivism — fragmented system vs. an effectively-running CIE
Illustrative shape, not specific values
- Fragmented system: the pattern most communities live with today
- Effectively-running CIE: the kind of result a community should be aiming for
What this enables When the data is this clear, the conversation with legislators changes. Re-entry stops being a moral plea and becomes a measurable investment.
These are illustrative targets, not benchmarks or guarantees. They show the kind of outcomes a leader would want to be reading on their dashboard.
Week 1 — Maria starts the search. Every door is its own intake.
Workforce, SNAP, Medicaid, childcare, transit, the diabetes clinic — six agencies, six intakes, six versions of the same story. None of them know what the other has done. The clock on the household savings keeps running.
Maria completes the training itself, but the unsupported transit, childcare, and health gaps catch up to her. Within six months she's working again — but in a worse-paying job, in a household still one bad month from crisis. The training worked. The system around the training did not.
- Story retold 6 times in 3 weeks
- Diabetes appointment missed — childcare fell through
- Childcare voucher submitted, never confirmed
- Bilingual workforce coach: 4-week wait list
- Listed rideshare-to-training program shut down in 2024
- Workforce intake counselor: 60+ active cases this month
- No one tracking whether the training led to a sustainable job
- Maria has no record of what's been started for her family
Week 1 — Maria's first conversation captures the whole picture, in Spanish.
A bilingual workforce coach is matched the same week. The intake captures household, health, transportation, and childcare in one sitting. SNAP, Medicaid, childcare voucher, and training enrollment move in parallel — not in sequence.
Training completed. Placed in a job with hours her family can sustain. Diabetes managed throughout. Twelve months later, still employed — and earning more than the manufacturing job paid.
- Day 1: Workforce intake — bilingual coach matched — matched.
- Day 2: SNAP enrollment — submitted.
- Day 3: Medicaid eligibility — confirmed — active.
- Day 5: Childcare voucher placed — placed.
- Day 7: Training program enrollment — enrolled.
- Day 10: Diabetes care continuity confirmed — in care.
- Day 14: Transportation — partner rideshare — active.
- Day 90: Training program completion — completed.
- Day 100: Employer placement matched to schedule — hired.
- Day 365: 12-month retention check-in — employed.
Illustrative example outcomes a community could see when a CIE is working well
When wraparound services move in parallel, here's what becomes measurable.
- Over 75%12-month employment retention
The difference between Maria still on the job at month 12 — or back in the same crisis with a different job title and one more program tried.
- Under 30 daysFrom first contact to coordinated wraparound services
Childcare, transit, healthcare, training enrollment — coordinated as one conversation, not five separate intakes that each take three weeks.
- 5 of 5Wraparound supports bundled per participant
A working parent leaves the network with all five wraparound supports — childcare, transit, healthcare, training, placement — secured before the first training day.
- ZeroLapses in chronic medication coverage during transition
Diabetes management doesn't pause because the insurance card just changed hands.
Intake → completion → placement → 12-month retention
Illustrative shape, not specific values
- Fragmented system: each stage loses people who could have stayed
- Effectively-running CIE: the wraparound supports keep people in the funnel
What this enables When retention is measurable like this, the workforce development line item is justifiable on its own results — not on the activity reports of separate programs that don't talk to each other.
These are illustrative targets, not benchmarks or guarantees. They show the kind of outcomes a leader would want to be reading on their dashboard.
Day 1 — The family is split across two shelters. Nobody on the ground knows it.
Each shelter intake captures only the people in front of it. Insulin, school records, FEMA, SNAP disaster relief, document replacement — every thread starts from scratch at a different agency. The family carries the coordination job themselves, in the worst possible week to be doing it.
A recovery measured in years, not months. The kids carry anxiety forward. James never fully restores the contracting business. The family stays housed — but on shakier ground than before. Disaster doesn't end when the water recedes. The recovery's quality depends on how the system showed up in the first 30 days.
- Family's story retold 9 times across 4 agencies
- Pediatric mental-health screen booked for week 2 — no follow-up
- FEMA application status — phone tree, no confirmation
- Section 8 transition: 18-month wait list
- Disaster food bank address out of date — closed last year
- Caseworker handling 80+ displaced households this week
- No one tracking whether the kids re-enrolled in school
- The family has no shared record of what's been started
Day 1 — Shelter intake recognizes the family is split. The reunification clock starts.
Cross-shelter coordination begins the day they arrive. Insulin, FEMA, SNAP, school, behavioral health, housing, livelihood — bundled into one tracked recovery plan that follows the family through 18 months.
Family reunified day 1. FEMA approved within two weeks. Kids back in school within the first week. Permanent housing within eight months. The disaster still happened; the recovery was tracked from start to finish.
- Day 1: Cross-shelter reunification — family together — reunified.
- Day 1: Denise's insulin secured — in care.
- Day 2: FEMA Individual Assistance application — submitted.
- Day 2: SNAP disaster relief — submitted.
- Day 2: Replacement documents bundled — submitted.
- Day 3: School re-enrollment for the children — enrolled.
- Day 7: Behavioral health screen — children — completed.
- Day 14: Temporary housing placement — placed.
- Day 21: James — tool replacement, contractor work re-up — active.
- Day 240: Permanent housing — moved in — moved in.
Illustrative example outcomes a community could see when a CIE is working well
When recovery is coordinated, here's what becomes trackable.
- Within 72 hoursFamilies reunified and on a documented recovery path
A family separated by a disaster doesn't spend the next two weeks trying to find each other through a phone tree.
- Day 1Critical medication continuity confirmed
Denise's insulin doesn't run out on the second night of the shelter — because day 1 includes a chronic-care check, not just a cot.
- By week 2Federal assistance applications bundled and tracked
FEMA, SNAP disaster relief, document replacement, insurance — submitted as one packet by week 2, not chased separately for months.
- 18 monthsRecovery pathway tracked from displacement to permanent housing
The family's recovery isn't 'closed' when the shelter empties. It's tracked until the kids are settled in a permanent school and the household income is back.
Days to family stability after a disaster
Illustrative shape, not specific values
- Fragmented system: stability arrives in months — sometimes years
- Effectively-running CIE: stability begins inside the first 72 hours
What this enables When recovery is trackable like this, FEMA's coordinated assistance reporting meets the bar — and the next disaster doesn't start from scratch.
These are illustrative targets, not benchmarks or guarantees. They show the kind of outcomes a leader would want to be reading on their dashboard.
IBM Consulting · Community Information Exchange
Building the infrastructure that turns community programs into community outcomes.
IBM Consulting builds Community Information Exchanges — the coordination infrastructure that connects nonprofits, clinics, government agencies, and community networks into networks that actually close the loop on the people they serve together. We deploy them community by community, in partnership with the organizations those communities already trust.
The case in brief
Most communities aren't short on programs. They're short on connection.
Every mid-size American city has hundreds of organizations working on food, housing, healthcare, workforce, re-entry, and the rest of the social determinants of health. A resident's path through "help" almost always crosses five, ten, a dozen of them — and today, that path is a repeated first-impression at every door. Every intake starts over. Every referral disappears.
That's a structural problem. More programs don't solve it. Connecting the programs does. It's an infrastructure question, not a programmatic one — and the evidence says it works: communities running a coordinated CIE see referral completion rates that are an order of magnitude higher than the fragmented baseline.
The platform
Connect360 is how we actually build one.
A Community Information Exchange platform, purpose-built for government agencies, community networks, and coordinated care — the opposite end of the market from the platforms that primarily serve hospitals and health plans. Connect360 sits above existing systems and connects them, rather than replacing them.
It's FHIR-native, HIPAA- and HITRUST-aligned, federally-compliant where it needs to be, and designed so the community running it governs it. IBM Consulting builds the platform. The community runs it.
01 Closed-loop referrals Every referral tracked from creation through delivery to documented outcome.
02 Person-centered record One unified view across providers, under the person's consent control.
03 Configurable by community Each network governs its own intake, outcomes, and data-sharing agreements.
04 Outcomes at the network level Population-level insight grounded in FHIR-standard data, exportable to HSDS.
05 Enterprise security HIPAA, HITRUST, 42 CFR Part 2, FedRAMP-aligned. The compliance posture agencies expect.
06 Built to integrate Connects to EHRs, case management, 211 platforms, and state-agency systems via open standards.
Deployments
One platform. Community-governed everywhere it's deployed.
Each deployment is a partnership between the Connect360 platform and the local organizations a community already trusts. IBM doesn't run the network — the community does. Our job is to build and maintain the infrastructure that lets them run it at scale.
Active · New York
Monroe County
Built by TogetherNow
Years of sustained operation across dozens of organizations. The proof point the CIE category was missing.
~70%
Closed-loop referral completion
In flight · North Carolina
Durham
ReCity Network · TogetherNow · IBM
A community-led deployment across 70+ ReCity member organizations. Re-entry, workforce, health, and the full SDOH spectrum — from the start.
70+
Community organizations in network
Next · 2026
Your community
To be named
Active conversations in Alaska, Michigan, Virginia, and other states. If your community is program-rich and you're ready to connect it — let's talk.
Partnership starts with a conversation
Who it's for
Connect360 is designed for the organizations that anchor a community.
The people we build for don't have a shortage of platforms competing for their attention. They have a shortage of infrastructure that actually connects what they fund, administer, or operate. Connect360 is that infrastructure.
Health plans & systems
Where value-based care meets social determinants. CIE is how clinical care and community services coordinate, not coexist.
Philanthropy
The outcomes you fund multiply when the organizations you fund are connected. Infrastructure is a strategic grant.
Community networks
Convening bodies like ReCity, 211s, backbone organizations. The network already exists — Connect360 is how it operates as one.
Insights
From the Connect360 blog.
Research, perspectives, and field notes from across the Connect360 network — on CIE design, outcomes measurement, the policy environment, and the realities of building community infrastructure.
Why closed-loop referrals matter for re-entry
Re-entry is the hardest coordination problem in community services. Here's why the same mechanics that produce 70% completion in SDOH carry over — and why Durham should be where it's proven.
ReadWhat we mean when we say "FHIR-native"
A lot of CIE vendors claim FHIR support. Here's the honest difference between FHIR as marketing surface and FHIR as foundation — and why it matters for integration.
ReadMeasuring community governance — how we evaluate it
The single strongest predictor of CIE success isn't technology. It's governance. Here's the framework we use to evaluate whether a community is ready for one.
Read Talk to us
Building CIEs is IBM's work. Let's talk about yours.
Whether you're a state agency, a health plan, a philanthropic funder, or a community convening body — the right next step usually starts with a conversation about what your community is trying to do and what it already has in place. We'll take it from there.