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

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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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

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