Redmond seeks council OK to share Apricot outreach database with Kirkland, Bellevue

Human Services Manager Brooke Buckingham asked the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on May 20 to place an agreement on the June 3 consent agenda that would let the City of Redmond host a shared Apricot homeless outreach database to be used by Redmond, Kirkland and Bellevue.

The request would establish a single license hosted by Redmond with participating cities paying a proportionate share, and would let outreach teams search a shared dataset to track clients who move between cities, Buckingham said.

The move is intended to replace the outreach team’s previous spreadsheet-based system and to improve coordination and reporting across jurisdictions, Buckingham said. “In fall of 2023, the homeless outreach team started using a new software platform called Apricot,” she told the committee.

The committee’s discussion centered on who can access the shared data and how the city will protect clients’ privacy. Council President Kritzer said she was “glad to see this being implemented” and praised the move beyond spreadsheets. Council member Fields pressed staff to include oversight reporting that shows whether outside agencies request the data and how those requests are handled. “Can we add that as part of the oversight?” Fields asked.

Deputy Director Sarah Buchanan told the committee that Redmond holds the license directly with the vendor and will bill participating cities their share. She said the city’s technical information services team has completed a privacy and security vetting of the vendor and that the outreach database contains limited demographic and outcome information. “We’re certainly not asking for immigration status,” Buchanan said, adding that case notes and outcome narratives are more detailed but that the city has tried to limit personal identifiers.

Buckingham and Buchanan said staff expect to do deduplication work to avoid duplicate client entries and that outreach teams in the three cities meet monthly to coordinate practices. Staff also said it would be possible to include the information about external data requests in the community health updates the city brings to council so elected officials can see who is “knocking at the door.”

There was consensus on moving the agreement forward for council action. The committee did not take a final vote but agreed to place the item on the June 3 consent agenda.

Why it matters: A shared outreach database aims to improve case coordination for people experiencing homelessness who move across city boundaries, but it raises data-governance questions for council about who may access records, how the city will respond to outside requests and how privacy protections will be enforced. Staff noted existing vetting and offered to return with reporting as part of community health updates.

Next steps: The committee scheduled the agreement for the June 3 consent agenda; staff said they will continue work on deduplication, privacy procedures and how to report external data requests to council.