Strategies for OpenLMIS Community Growth: Country Engagement & Implementation Partner Capacity Building (GOV)

Description: How can we engage more directly with countries and users? What implementation partners should we be engaging with to build a broader OpenLMIS community? What support/resources do partners need to be able to implement with success?

Leads: Dykki

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Join the call: https://www.uberconference.com/info3285

Optional dial-in number: 716-293-6106

PIN: 63498

Rapporteur/Notetaker: Sandy Hawley

Notes from Session: (see also slides for this from Dykki)

Proposed Teams or "Working Groups"

• Advocacy and Communications
• Supply Chain Best Practices
• Product Management - product roadmap, requirements, user engagement 
  • bring up themes/topics around prioritization, SC, interoperability- related to the core
  • detailed design decisions vs long term vision
  • level of detail varies, require different teams
• Implementations- a place to collaborate on what we're building vs. one off calls and conversations, peer to peer
  • support, knowledge-sharing, training, requirements, user engagements where key issues might bubble up to different/other groups
  • think about country level voice, sharing feedback on testing (comes from the country) 
  • Measurement and KPIs
• Technical (may be multiple)
• Governance (community roadmap, sustainability, revenue generation)

Questions on defining areas for collaboration:

• Teams might need to be cross cutting - both governance and tech
• What is requirement for OpenLMIS, what should be
• You can have a tech roadmap that is not a product roadmap
• Who is responsible
• There is interest in implementer dialogue- current implementations- knowledge sharing on country-specific work
• Seems like we are getting at organizational qualities, business processes, and resources that we need to account for
• What are the areas of overlap?
• Why split? There are people that fall between- you can't build product w/o implementation
• Implementers group may not have value
• 2013- Solutions vs Community Group/Committees
• Globally- feel like aren't getting feedback from users- too many levels in the chain, we need strategies to address this
• What about support? When you have in-country teams building, they are doing the maintenance
• Survey on feedback from implementations
• End users haven't been adequately represented
• End user engagement is part of Product and Implementations
• End users didn't contribute to other open source communities beyond mailing list - confidence level in communicating
• Hard for implementers to share with global community - exposure in discussing failure
• Can we add end user feedback processes to Implementation Toolkit?
• Where do KPIs live- implementations vs. product management
• Issue with measurement - be careful around what is within control of OpenLMIS (we are not a delivery system)
• system built for low resource setting- is it built adequately enough to function (i.e. servers)
• if the system isn't being used that could contribute
• how does the use of the product impact the context? (implementation)  Is it doing what it's supposed to do? (product)
• Core Product vs Implementations carry many of the same themes, just with a different lense
  • impact vs. system performance

New Partners and Members: What do we gain from them, What do they gain from us?

• The wider the community, the better the product
• This isn't sustainable right now- what happens when Gates and USAID dry up?

Activity brainstorm (see also sticky notes in artifacts):

• More funders/Global Gatekeepers 
• Gavi
• NORAD
• WHO
• UNICEF
• PtD
• Global Fund 
• HIS- ecosystem tools
• ERP manufacturers
• Implementers: Last Mile Health, eHealth Africa, (what do we think about demand generation for more implementers?
• Devis
• Partners with capacity in country: Baobab
• Pharma groups or 3PLs: their motivation would be to get products to market
• ARC
• SCMS market groups- IHS presented about regional wholesalers; maybe we could present the data of what is being procured- beyond central medical stores; that is information they would value. Ultimately CMS might not be the model- how can we look at other models.
• Partners on SC bid: Chemonics, PwC
• Academic; WDI

Other open source experiences:

• MSH, JPIEGO, Apt Assoc., the fact that they chose to implement open source was impactful (biggest competitor was CDC!?)
• CDC invested in 5 countries- each time it was separate
• Everytime there was a new implementor is was more momentum and donor awareness

Artifacts: