Spring 2026 Community Survey Results
Back in March, the MN HMIS Governing Board, End User Advisory Committee (EUAC), and ICA put out its month-long community survey. This survey is meant to give these groups a sense of ICA’s performance and the ease of use of HMIS. In total, 146 folx within the Minnesota homeless response system took time to respond to the survey. We have analyzed your feedback and wanted to share some findings and trends that we have observed. Please click below to learn more!
First, the numbers:
About 57% of all responses were folx from Greater Minnesota and 43% from the Twin Cities Metro Area
One-third of the respondents have used HMIS for less than two years. It was great to hear from new users!
Over 50 Coordinated Entry assessors and 30 agency leadership responded. We appreciated hearing from them!
ICA Performance
Many of the questions asked within the survey helped us understand how ICA is performing in six key areas: communications, Helpdesk, ICA staff, trust in ICA to improve HMIS, training, and overall performance. Below is a chart of how ICA has performed in those key areas. Each category was rated on a 1-5 scale, 5 being the best score. You will notice a steady improvement since the software transition in the summer/fall of 2024. ICA has improved in all areas!
Trust to improve HMIS
The other area to note in this chart is the HMIS ease of use question. We asked respondents to rate how easy HMIS is to use in several different areas such as overall data entry, reporting, etc. We are happy to show that there has been steady improvement since the fall of 2024 There is always room for improvement but the Board, EUAC, and ICA are quite pleased that things are moving in the right direction.
The graph below goes into more detail about whether those surveyed “trust ICA to improve HMIS. Increasingly, ICA has been receiving higher scores on trust since the fall of 2024. It starts out in fall of 2024 with 52% of respondents scoring us a 4 or 5 out of 5. In our latest survey, that number has jumped all the way to 78%. We appreciate that we have continued to gain your trust to make improvements to HMIS.
Your survey responses are making a difference. Based on some of the feedback we have received in surveys (as well as in other venues), ICA has responded in many ways. Below are a few examples:
Started holding Monthly reporting Q&A webinars (next one is June 23, 2:30pm-3:20pm).
Created a training roadshow and visited many of you in Summer and Fall 2025 (we are still taking in-person or virtual training requests).
Improved our Knowledge Base materials with more screenshots and videos.
Making more of Knowledge Base materials role-based and easier to locate.
Started offering an option to schedule a call with a Helpdesk staff member. Now you can plan to speak directly with an ICA helpdesk staff member at a time you know will work for you and an HD staff member.
Continued Response
As we continue to review the survey and listen to the community in other ways, we will be rolling out more improvements and assistance for users. Below are a few examples:
Starting soon: “Byte-sized” HMIS sessions with our helpdesk manager, Betty Notto (click the link to learn more and register).
Proactively finding and merging duplicate client records within HMIS and reaching out to users who are accidentally creating duplicates.
Making it easier to see which prompts are required on report launch forms, plus adding links to information about reports to launch forms.
Looking to make significant changes to how reports are processed with the goal of reducing report time-outs.
Continuing to look at options for reducing system slowness wherever possible.
We appreciate everyone who gave us feedback this past spring. The next community survey will come out in September. Until then, if you have any questions about the survey or anything to share, please email us at mnhmis@icalliances.org.