September 8, 2020

(Carl) URLs / cache

• (Wes) To get something up and running, implementations to get demo instance up and running. Not a PATH.openlmis.org? Could get a sub-domain but goal is the simplicity of getting it up and running quickly.

(Carl) Assuming potential partners have already been appraised of what’s going on with enterprise support model and would maintain it. Coming back to support levels, is that something that we would expect the partner to provide in-kind or dedicated resources to that level of support?

• (Kim) Yes, they’re familiar with it but we’ll need to go into more detail with them as part of the evaluation process and would consider this part of core.

(Kelly) Is it possible that country would not do standard support?

• (Brandon) Priority is to get all countries onto standard support. If countries don’t want that and say no, approach is to try to explain the value and importance and try as hard as we can this year to get everyone on board and build this into their budgets. Hope we have full compliance.

• (Kim) One exception is COVID editions given the crisis response mode.

(Carl) With 25K, if VR is not part of the implementation team, thinking about the exchange of funds, that has some transactional costs. Have you thought of ways to mitigate costs

• (Brandon) Great question. Most of the implementations VR doesn’t have a role, part of the discussion w/ 1:1 conversations. Flexible with how funds come through. Carl, do you have any ideas on transactional costs? Imagining in countries where VR doesn’t have any role in implementations, TPs do, build it into their annual budgets and VR can send invoice. Eager to hear ideas to simplify transactional costs.

• (Carl) Some charge overhead fee depending on cost, threshold may or may not be $25K. Other alternative is if there are orgs that provide the support that the maintenance fee is used for, also implementation partners, would be to figure out way to manage that without fiscal transfer up and back down. Would have to have transparency on implementation partner side as well.

(Jean) Share what we’ve observed w/ $25K charge. Received invoice for next year support fee and on top is $25K, one response is that we don’t have the budget in place but received the invoice. Work planning section, budget is way below what we thought, plus fee to add in the invoice from VR is high for us in one of the countries. Struggling stage to figure out how we can accept proposed invoice to support this effort. This is a challenge we are facing for the first country and may be a challenge for others as well. How can we overcome this? How do we get approval from the mission and then move it to the MOH? They say no way they’d have the money to sustain this in the future.

• (Lindabeth) Find that interesting, because when we do work planning we don’t get into enough detail to get into those numbers it’s more generalized. Concerned that it’s not a priority for PSM. Don’t think $25K is a big deal. We need to do more messaging around the importance of governance and being able to have a finger in maintenance pie to keep this going. The fact that countries are pushing back, relationship to what money countries have, something wrong with this. Need to dig in further.

• (Jean) Angola is only getting $125K, so $25K is a lot from that perspective.

(Carl) Don’t know if I’ve seen what the implementation costs are over a number of countries, is there a point where we have more of a graded support cost until we get to a certain threshold?

• (Kelly) I think we are way overcomplicating this, been through these budget processes. If there’s not enough funds through USAID, implementation partner and MOH, it is a prioritization problem. Our counterparts pay several thousand for accounting software, for excess warehousing space because they haven’t reprioritized how they’re putting their product away in warehouses. Would argue that PSM and mission and MOH could work together and find $25K a year.

• (Lindabeth) Understand Jean that you’re the messenger, but need to have a conversation about pushing the reset on priorities. Agree with Kelly. Might try to take it back within my team, specifically with country leads to make sure that they have a conversation w/ country team at large to make sure they’re clear on priorities.