March 10, 2020

Introductions and Call opening (5 min)

• Notes from February Governance call

February Notes

Welcome

Review agenda and objectives for this call

Review of EOI content and dissemination process

Is there alignment that we want to go totally public with this? (no dissent raised)

Current list of contacts (tab 1) and dissemination channels (tab 2). PLEASE ADD YOUR IDEAS!

Brainstorm list of channels/contacts we can draw on:

Ashraf: Being public and transparent can be good, but we pre-empt that people might interpret this negatively; we need to get ahead of these rumors with our own language; should portay it as a purposeful experiment rather that people getting the idea that we are folding

Emily: keep our messaging around diversification, we could point to some of the more positive messaging that highlights the need for diversification; this is an opportunity to be an example of how you create a new diverse revenue model; a way to promote the positive side

Private pharma, J&J, Merk, -the trick is finding the right people; software sector people like IBM and has informally talked with OpenLMIS for years; Thoughtworks; SAGE; 

How do we find the right contacts at these organizations to move it past their inbox ; projects like mTAPS; we could model the message based on what we anticipate their business case to be

External Communication re: our Transition 

To preempt confusion around the EOI process and dispel any misinformation that is circulating, what proactive steps can we take now?

-What 'materials' can/should we create to communicate our plan? (for example, FAQ document? blog to explain our sustainability process/rationale)?

-Current ideas: blog on OpenLMIS website, info in a new OpenLMIS newsletter,  a roadmap of the transition/handover process, increased participation in online forum

Idea for feedback: Should we use the Health and Humanitarian Logistics Conference (Nairobi, July) as an opportunity to present on our sustainability journey and get our message out there? Would that be reaching the right audiences? 

Brandon: What audiences got the negative messages about OpenLMIS?

Ashraf: Some of this in unavoidable; we can't know everyone's motivations. All we can do to put forward our own rationale

Emily: Ashraf's right; the ICTWorks had a very click bait style so it got a lot of readership. Would be great for there to be some language for partners to use? or link to that Digital Square Blog? it can't all come from VillageReach. Proactive communication from all governance members is important --if there is language or ideas to provide for key messages to include.

Brian: we need to come up with our headline; a quick way to get the messages out without having to get into the depth of an article 

Ashraf: we can call out non-VR contributions to showcase a group approach

Looking at whether the data that is generated by OpenLMIS is worth enough to sustain the core. CHAI and OpenLMIS core collaborating on this effort

learning hypothesis is that commercial entities would be willing to pay; and countries would be willing to share

CHAI research objective (separately funded by BMGF):  Investigating willingness of companies to pay for OpenLMIS data, and willingness for countries to share data which would allow us to sustain operations/make revenue (ie: under what circumstances would countries share data? What data do manufacturers want?) and what is the ongoing cost (including both country and core)

OpenLMIS core involvement: support this work at core and country level; use results to influence partner exploration . Zambia and Malawi are countries where this will be tested out

Meeting notes for this workstream being compiled here on our wiki: /wiki/spaces/OP/pages/737312950 

Anticipating a 5 month period; with frequent check-ins with the governance committee

Type of support they need: Costing info (will work closely with Kim & VR to understand the running costs)

In countries will be important to work with JSI in Zambia and VR in Malawi because they are the implementers; also coordinate with steward conversations re: annual maintainence fund

Understanding what is the data, and understanding at what frequency is the commercial data; to understand better the data points that can come out of these countries, quality of the data, whether modeling would be required in order to have a complete data set that can reliably be shared.

Comment from Emily: PSM is the primary implementer in Malawi; there are 3 types of governance conversations that could be going on at once–and they need to be coordinated thoughtfully (re: annual fund, monetization, and partner exploration conversations

Stewards, and particularly Rebecca & Brian- could do some active outreach to countries about all of these conversatoins. Tell countries to be ready to be contacted for them; ask them who their primary point of contacts are for these conversations

Conferences and Meetings

Conferences provide the community the opportunity for OpenLMIS members to speak or represent the OpenLMIS software and community in public forum.

Opportunities documentation

Definitions to use shared terminology:

• Implementation opportunity: an opportunity for an implementation or deployment of the OpenLMIS software.  Usually this is done at a national or sub-national level within a ministry of health. This can also include feature work which would be done within the implementation and contributed back to the global codebase.
• Community opportunity: a funding opportunity to support an organization or individual to work directly on the global codebase and/or administrate the community processes. This may include funding specific features on the community roadmap.

• This Trello table is being updated on an ongoing basis; to help the core team to track and manage implementation opportunities, but also provides a detailed snapshot of the scope and status of current implementation opportunities for stakeholders.

Community Opportunities:

• New Trello table! Similar to the above table, this tool is being used by the stewards to track our exploring of new product opportunities and partnerships

Study Tours:

• Study Tours wiki page tracks applications received, study tours completed, and other key milestones related to OpenLMIS Study Tours