Governance Committee Discussion – Stakeholder Meeting, November 2016

TODO:

Getting together on a common agenda for 2017

-       Get collateral out to the MSDs of the world (for 2017 roadmap)

-       Shared measurement framework on what we want to achieve in 2017

-       Shared measurement framework for BMGF and USAID

-       Increasing communication model

Plan to move forward gap analysis proposal

Roadmap incorporating inputs from today by EOY

Backlogs across all countries viewable

Extra day at the VAN meeting to demonstrate OpenLMIS? [first week of April]

Follow-up Governance Meeting: 7AM PST / 10AM EST December 15^th

JWW: What is the criteria for describing priority? As simple as who can put it money?

KB: It would be helpeful to have some translation between the governance and product committees to say if we add vaccines, this is what has to come off. Is the demand for 1 country or more? Some sort of evaluation matrix to evaluate priorities would be beneficial.

JWW: Sounds like you’re describing that the product committee prep a briefing for the governance committee. The GC then decides which should be built. If it’s just an extension point it doesn’t need to go to the GC.

LDB: Does the govt. committee need to meet more often?

KD: If there is some idea of what deliverables are needed for an implementation (i.e. what has been promised to the govt) this is a big push.

EW: An implementer could also develop a feature in parallel to the backlog outside of the OpenLMIS branch.  

MM: Also need an in country governance committee. Big regret from eLMIS in TZ.

GB: Early recommendation was that there should be a user group from countries that are interested. Why not have a committee made up of many prospective countries.

MM: 5 person committee with donor, someone from MSD, someone from project, ICT, and X. We need to empower the local entity to decide on what should be in.

LBD: Zambia just announced they have put a line item in then budget.

JWW: Each country should have its own country user group. We’ve been unsuccessful in the past when saying everyone should join. Should perhaps identify who these people are.

EW: You vote with your feet. People that participate have more say. What is useful for the product committee? A country roadmap they can harmonize with other countries? Difficult to get people to participate in something they don’t know what they’ll get out of it

BT: There is a lag between the re-arch and country roll-outs.

KB: How do we make the linkages to country groups to say even if we don’t pay for something now, you may get something later for free by participating.

EW: Should be annual meeting of all countries implementing OpenLMIS to share best practices. Sequence features for the next year. Everyone that participates gets updates on what features are coming down the pipe and can start lobbying for them.

MM: DHIS2 does a similar approach.

GB: Many countries don’t know about OpenLMIS. CRDM is a process to change this.

JWW: We have some budget to do this. Part of the job description for the eLMIS advisor in TZ is to report up to the global community.

…

JWW: Shared roadmap helps us see alignment or lack of it.

EW: Each country will have their own roadmaps, they just want to know what else is going on.

BT: GC is guidance on more than just the product. Rather this is our theme for the next release, 25% is going for a feature, 20% to something else, etc. As well as policy development. Plan for a direction rather than specific features

MM: Agree – where the OpenLMIS product is going and where the community should engage.

KB:

JWW: We could provide some funding to participate in SA around the HISP conference*

EW: JSI has a small presence there.

KB: There is a small SA GHSC-TA

JWW:

KD: We also need to have some objectives about who to pull in to the community, such as the Baobabs of the world. The prod development happens at the global level, but support is regional.

EW: 1^st and 2^nd tier support is in country. Who will eventually be able to implement from in country.

KB: Push back in the foundation is that there is no long term support structure for OpenLMIS.

LBD: This should be in the ARC.

KB:

JWW: Is the ultimate goal to have OpenMRS where rando’s chime in with support? Without something funded this is what you’ve got to do. That or regional partners that are willing to be a resource.

KB: You have partners that OpenLMIS is potential business.

BT: Where OpenMRS is struggling is the implementing partners.

JWW: This is why we’ve reached out to BOA to create an MOU. They could handle regional tiers 1 – 3. If they want to pick up training as well, that’s a possibility. These are currently hidden costs. Architected in the cloud

KB: How do we surface these costs? So we can start asking countries to put aside these costs ahead of time. Example of Rwanda not coming up for 3k. To pay for nationwide system.

KD: To MM point, if the local governance committee can’t find that money..

JWW: Summary for WB – formation of country user groups and formulation of roadmaps. They would have contact with the product committee. Main responsibility of the product committee is to identified features on the country roadmap that have promise as a global feature. Responsible for raising these with the GC. GC objectivs: Standards and interoperability, objectives for a year. Outreach targets for the year. Building a steering committee from high tech sector – transform OpenLMIS into an Odoo. In that market analysis, there is a community edition everyone can take – PaaS. Enterprise product that is licensed. A nominal charge to make people invested.

GB: I don’t know what the ethics of providing a sub-par version. I think it would be better to have an agreement with a country on what their responsibilities are rather than have a fee.

EW: I don’t think the fee would be enough to prop up maintenance of the system.

KD: Understanding the business model is going to be critical in 2017. It is going to be an enterprise system with national scale. At some point in time it must have similar features with a COTS. By 2018, if you have 20 implementations how will you provide that without having COTS level pricing.

WB: Tread carefully – how do you let them buy into the process in terms of support but also believe the system is theirs. You’re going back on your word if it is no longer an open source project.

KB: At the global level, OpenLMIS needs to diversify or find other revenue streams. If we have a “tax” then countries need to see the benefit, get new features.

EW: I challenge the donors to pay for global support and ask countries to pay for the maintenance support.

KB: How do we elevate this thought so that when we speak to countries we can talk about maintenance and upgrade costs. Who are the partners that participate in this discussion?

WB: At one point SCMS asked countries to put budgets aside for maintenance.

BT: If you look at the overall value of the commodities that are moving through the system then there is a story to discuss the reduction in waste by X% and the cost of the system is X/5%. This argument works for funders as well.

LBD: How do you quantify that?

WB: Looking at this analysis next year

KD:

BT: Can also show no empty shelves

EW: Show that the cost of delivery has been reduced

BT: Coverage improves (maybe longer term)

GB: IHS was able to show that based on visibility, govt. X was able to not-order 20m in stock they didn’t need.

EW: Need to build a business case with TOC over the course of an implementations.

JWW: We’ll be doing this in Malawi. Implementation guide and key metrics.

KB: How likely is any of this to happen since this is a fraction of a fraction of our time.

JWW: Lets talk about reporting. LBD asked that we harmonize reports with the BMGF requests. KB and LBD have shared.

LBD: I want to see who is spending what, where. LBD and KB will do this.

KB: We want to capture what’s being produced

JWW/BT: Shared results tracker?

JWW: Shared financial reporting can help with apples to apples.

EW: Very difficult to get this roll-up from the country level. Need to be clear about the minimal data set we expect from a country.

KD: Getting people to look at common buckets is a nightmare. In 3 – 5 years, they would like to have a bucket to measure investments across their Software dev portfolio. That enables apples to apples.

JWW: Discuss MoU WB raised? What can we do to mitigate mistrust.

KB: I’ll take on the blame for poor communication. BMGF did not communicate to USAID. Collective impact and transparency. Access to money should be shared on the GC before rather than after it’s awarded.

EW: Country implementations will depend on where it is happening.

JWW: If we can grow the pie, it will benefit everyone including those we serve. 2017 will be a pivotal year for the product to avoid future fragmentation. More important than ever to work together.

LBD: We have clear touch points for the coming period, but I think bi-weekly meetings for the next period will build trust.

JWW: Need to have a united front regarding branding of OpenLMIS. Perhaps even “Powered by …”

EW: Agree

Vaccines

A week before the 15^th Dec we’ll have the proposal for the gap analysis in