Open Referral UK Data Standard

These pages provide guidance on using the Open Referral UK standard - a UK extension to the international Open Referral standard for interchange of data on human services.

They describe the standard data structure and Application Programmer Interface (API). They also link to open source tools that help you adopt the standard and see what others are doing with it.

API Query Tool

This lets you connect to your chosen API endpoint to query taxonomy and service data. It exposes each API call it makes so you can copy the syntax. You can examine results in diagrammatic and JSON format to better understand the data structure.

Open the tool

Service Directory Exporter

The Service Exporter allows providers to easily view the entire contents of a Service Directory in a Google Spreadsheet form. With derived columns to show how services relate to organisations, service types etc.

Open the exporter

Service Directory Validator

This tool checks that a specific service directory follows the standard. It shows any issues as well as statistics on what types of data is included in the scanned Service Directory. This helps Councils move to the standard. This tool also helps establish trust as it ensures that a Service Directory follows the standard.

Open the validator

Check the Contact us page if you need help applying the standard or want to publicise how you use it.