Governance Committee Meeting Notes - November 17, 2015

Committee Updates:

• Community Manager Hired: Starts Jan 4th
• OpenLMIS Impact Collateral In Progress
• Mission, Vision, Principles Finalized
• Re-Architecture Plan in Progress

• Impact Collateral: 
  • JSI and CHAI would like to review content. Others declined.
• Mission, Vision, Principles:
  • Good starting place, can evolve over time
  • Next year we can check in about if this is still directionally correct

OpenLMIS Implementation Opportunities Review Roundtable

• Malawi
• USAID BAA: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea
• RFPs: Cameroon (Sage Expansion); Botswana Bar Code Track & Trace
• Uganda:

• Sharing guidelines:
  • Sharing as default community behavior - there are many benefits of sharing opportunities
  • Orgs may determine timing of when to share biz dev opportunities with the group
• Malawi - planned implementation of OpenLMIS/eLMIS in 2016 via USAID funding (joint JSI/VillageReach)
• BAA Interoperability Workshop - Attendees: Karl, Josh. No co-creation directly related to OpenLMIS.
• CHAI working on the Sage Expansion in Cameroon - Sage is expanding to sub-national levels. Scope is WMS, Order fulfillment, and stock mgmt. Currently Cameroon is just looking at these levels, but may be interested in lower levels (and possibly OpenLMIS) in the future.
• PATH - Working on Botswana Bar Code Track & Trace (early stage pilot for a few family planning commodities). Might involve OpenLMIS with new bar code functionality, but not necessarily.
• CHAI working with Uganda on their desire to role out a facility-based LMIS. Uganda is using Sage for their ERP, and wants the new system to be able to talk to Sage. They are still possibly interested in OpenLMIS if it meets the requirements. Expect updates in the next few weeks.  
  
  
  

What is the broad charter of the Governance Committee? What is the profile of people who should be on the committee?

• Goal: increase country and African-based involvement in the leadership of OpenLMIS

• If group is just US-based, opens community up to criticism and doesn't include country perspectives. However broader group can lose focus. Perhaps invite one or two people to represent country perspective?
• Including direct country involvement would help ensure countries have an interest in making sure OpenLMIS continues, is sustainable, and is getting value from other implementations. Prefer country rep over NGO in-country rep.
• Would country reps be interested in the topics currently being discussed by the governance committee? Would they approach the community with a collaborative perspective, or a "I need this" perspective? Is the governance committee the right forum for country engagement?
• Based on differing opinions of participants in this call, decided to toss this back out to country teams to get their input and have them engage with stakeholders in country to discuss best mechanism for engagement, and what topics would be engaging to countries. Possible strategies:
  • Voting membership on governance committee
  • Participation in governance committee calls
  • Country advisors group (held separately from governance calls)
• Sarah to send note to all governance committee members that they can forward out to get input, and report back

Re-Architecture Plan:

• Technical & Product Committee are preparing an rearchitecture plan, including the goals of the re-architecture, and project timeline.
  Does the Governance Committee want to engage in this process, and if so, how?

• Ran out of time so did not have sufficient time to discuss this issue
• Rich will be distributing high-level re-architecture plan. Please send comments on re-architecture to governance mailing list.
• Group to determine if we need an ad-hoc governance committee meeting to discuss re-architecture

What are the goals of the Governance Committee for the next 3 months? What issues raised during the community meeting should we tackle first:

• Formalize Community Decision Making Processes
• Advocacy (Collateral, OpenLMIS Roadshow, etc)
• Funding for Broader Community & Implementations 
• Increasing Country Engagement / DHIS2-style training program / Regional Bodies Support OpenLMIS
• Sustainability / Regional Support Model