Community Vision, Mission, Principles (Plenary)
- Description: Read-out of results from one-text process. Group discussion of what these mean in practice.
Leads: Dykki, Edward
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Join the call: https://www.uberconference.com/info3285
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Rapporteur/Notetaker: Sandy Hawley
Notes from Session:
Key Questions:
1) Customizable vs. Configurable (Extensibility)
2) Platform vs. Software
3) Sustainability
4) Technology principals AND community principals
Think about key themes:
- actionable items that align with principals
- split of community vs. software principals
- what are the teams/capabilities within the community: knowledge sharing (internal comms) is a top priority, including documentation: how do we operationalize this?
What is missing/additional questions:
- need to better define process for integrating significant changes to core
- able to customize code for local implementation (this is a different concept than what is appropriate for last mile, i.e. bandwidth)
- sentiment behind reusable - have to build solutions that cost more with the reuse feasibility (community ensuring implies behavior).
- This is challenging - making it available is different than ensuring its "easy for countries to adopt" - these are different principals.
- Having a group of people who have long term funding to focus on the core would help solve the issue- worth effort to have resources to ensure the community is represented
- can we define different paths at the start of implementation - either offer the "soup to nuts" ($$$) or more custom solutions
- who manages the decisions, should we try to define governance?
- can we break down goals for next year- we commit to doing x,y,z - to measure what we do, what do each of these means to us?
- lets be explicit about how we are making these principals actionable.
What is key to preserve?
- 1) CONFIGURABLE vs. customizable (product can be tweaked, but customizable is more of a platform) - OpenMRS vs. Bahnmi
- OpenMRS prioritizes community, platform, software; ends up being backbone of software "platform for medical records whatever they may be"
- Thoughtworks building on top of that (out of box), not as broad - install, configure, it is a product,an application - Bahnmi is opensource; not intended to be modular- makes it very easy for implementors, faster implementation
- Do we want broad base logistics services or the full stack? Initially it was the full picture, but now, with time - seeing divergence, it's leaning more to a platform
- Can we be both- should be both- most sell-able feature is configuration (this is how it works for you) adds most value
- what is the gap between product and platform
- evaluating where to focus on product feasibility
- Offering the "soup to nuts" is important
- borrowing from PSE, supply chain suite products- consider: do we want this to go into other processes?
- suite of tools that work together
- Customizable typically includes: configurable, brand, multiple modules- lots of things to capture/define
- a central repository of add ons that don't break the core, and vice versa
- what goes in the core what doesn't?
- 2) APPROPRIATE
- 3) REUSABLE
- Some of these principals apply to community and some apply to technology - what are we trying to answer? Community vs. Software.Platform - should we split them up? Both are valuable, but different
- technology principals AND community principals
- principals of community follow under
- Think about key themes
- actionable items that come from principals
- Split of community vs. software
- Comments requested via email or one text end of day Wednesday.
OPPORTUNITIES ACTIVITY (see Dykki's notes in PPT)
- LMIS is not everything (it can assist you, but can't fix broader supply chain issues, LMIS is a component) it's more about complete, accurate, timely data/information
- Gates VAN project- people and policy part should be included
- people need incentive to use tools- if OpenLMIS implementation is to be successful; people are necessary component
- The people part is important, but should the community focus on this? Can it be translated, can people with varying skills use it/benefit from it? Technology implications vs. people implications.
- It is responsibility of community to design for easy usability regardless of end user
- Easy to use tool that allows (empowers?) implementers and stakeholders alike
- Reason we see value (reason community is here) is because we want to reduce the overall cost of getting to high quality LMIS, AND embed intelligence
- MRS data model example- start with field-tested model
- We're the factory trying to help implementations develop faster, better, more cost efficient (long term) solutions -that is the responsibility of the community; support as much as we can - that countries choose this product and use it (faster, easier, cheaper, better)
AREAS FOR COLLABORATION- how do we have cross-org teams
- Communications
- internal: knowledge sharing- documentation, training, information sharing, community support
- external: general brand, messaging, awareness, shared assets (collateral, web, PR,)
- Product Roadmap
- Community Roadmap
- Sustainability thinking
CAPABILITIES / REQUIREMENTS
- fundraising/revenue generation
- logisticians
- experience design
- product management/owner
- evangelists
- should be a requirement to assess and communicate the value- actuarial
- systems integration, knowledge about other systems
- supply chain domain expertise
- academic partnerships- there are challenges because we are coming from very different worlds - trying to contextualize for us
- PSE- its about $, for us, there is no revenue model for our world- when our people have better systems we cost MOH more
- development talent, health informatics, what systems can we use that are feasible with local workforce?
- advocacy with MOH - explaining value and making appropriate recommendations based on resources
Artifacts:
OpenLMIS: the global initiative for powerful LMIS software