Database gathers info on Sydney's homeless

The NSW government has teamed up with Microsoft and a homelessness prevention collaboration to create a database of Sydney's rough sleepers, as it works towards a target of halving street homelessness by 2025.

The project launched this week aims to create a by-name list of people sleeping rough in the CBD, and will make it easier for service providers to collaborate, the state government says.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said more than 37,000 people in NSW experienced homelessness every day, and the initiative would provide a more accurate understanding of the challenges they faced.

"By using technology to collect a range of social and demographic data on rough sleepers, we can improve the way we respond to homelessness," she said in a statement on Saturday.

Graham West from the Act to End Street Sleeping collaboration said the ultimate goal was to create a "vulnerability index" of rough sleepers across the state to determine risk and help prioritise specialist services.

The data collected this week will be used to inform potential expansion of the program across the state.