How to Recruit University Data Experts to Help Your Agency

Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Conference, October, 2026.

I would like to see more data science experts working and doing research with housing and homelessness agencies. This talk is a guide for community agencies and not-for-profits that explains how to reach out to a university or college data expert and set up a research project that benefits everyone. I touch on ethics applications, data sharing agreements and the secondary use of community administrative data for research purposes. I also touch on how synthetic data (described in more detail here) can be used to kick-start a collaboration. Since I’ve use my own experience as a template for this presentation, much of what I discuss is specific to Alberta and Canada.