September 25, 2018

Introductions and Call opening

• Notes from August Governance call
  • August 21, 2018

Intro from Stew, joining the call today

Engaging SolDevelo to participate in Governance

(3ish minutes)

• SolDevelo have been functioning as trusted partners for some time but have never officially been invited to governance
• Proposal to be grandfathered in as a TP and member of the governance committee: all feedback is positive, no dissent
  • JSI: approve
  • VR: approve
  • PATH: approve
  • Ona: approve
  • Kaleb: approve
  • PSM: approve
• Continued Discussion: Should SolDevelo sign a letter to comply with principles of TPs? We could do that for every organization; make everyone officially sign up to adhere principles

Next Step: Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed) to officially invite Jakub from SolDevelo

Partner coordination  (5 min)

• Discussion/suggestions on how to increase partner coordination for upcoming opportunities; more joint proposals
• JSI: we need better information about actual opportunities, and enough lead time to put together a solid proposal
• The more we know in advance, the better prepared we can be
• Suggestion from JSI: could solicit input from the community during the design phase, scope of projects. This could produce realistic scopes of work
• Suggestion from VR: promote partnerships within the community to put together better teams; want to evangelize this idea
• If partnerships are created in early phases, from the outset, they will be more well-received
  • Was Angola work a public RFP? Yes, but work will be done to increase visibility of future opportunities and publicize it within the community 

New Trusted Partner Update (4 min)

Sustainability update (4 min)

Vendor Contracting and Kick Off

Resonance submitted a proposal, Kaleb provided feedback around our concerns re: timing. Final proposal and budget is in the final review process. Should be finalized in less than 2 weeks. 

How do we want to kick off the process? Can we find a way to get all of the governance committee to initiate discussion with them? Perhaps divide this group into time zones. Resonance are based in Vermont. Kaleb Brownlow (Unlicensed) to send an email out to the group to kick off the process, Rebecca can help as needed to coordinate initial discussions

Grant Spend and Proposal Update (5 min)

Source: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GxQ4hv8kLGGLfYcd7or7zkoRYVdYXeHGaB2CH4BPwa4/edit?usp=sharing

Interface Workstream Update (5 min)

Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed) & Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Deactivated)

1. Voting outcome for prioritizing DHIS2 (Vision for Integration)-majority vote achieved
2. How to proceed for remaining priorities (do we really need this level of detail on Governance or should we move to product?)

Not sure we will have much time to do other work in this workstream; so no need to propose any other votes at this time. 

Carl: happy to help support DHIS2 team; can play a facilitation and coordination role

Stew also interested in being in the loop on this conversation. Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Deactivated) will keep him and Carl looped in 

Using actual data for demo, performance, and reporting

We are constantly constrained by our inability to obtain large data sets from our current implementations. We would like to update the governance of this challenge and risk to current work.

Challenge is that we don't have access to robust set of actual data. We have tried to obtain VIMS (obtained approval) but couldn't get the data. How do we address this risk?

This is challenging for us to do development work; and a risk. We did try to get data from Tanzania; approval was given but we were not able to get the data. 

If there is a way we can leverage this community to get a data set, that would be very helpful. Perhaps we can continue to coordinate with JSI to obtain the Tanzania data. There was a previous mis-communication between country team and others. Ashraf and Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Deactivated) to continue to coordinate

Stew: What is the crux of the difficulty? Is it data approval, or sharing issue?

Kaleb: getting a couple of data sets would be really helpful for product development. Issue seems to be on the sharing side

Parambir: How much data is needed? Response: 6 months or a year of stock management and requisitions. This would limit us to TZ and Zambia

Carl: Could data-sharing agreements/data governance be integrated into future RFPs? Want to make sure this is carved into project activities, timelines and budgets. 

Ashraf: eLMIS data is already being shared through a formal agreement with BI&A

Next step: need for more conversation around how the community can access anonymized data; extended discussion on strategy needed

Current implementations-updates on what stage they are at/activities 

*There was not time for this update, suggest that we add it to next month's agenda

 (5 min)

• Mozambique (VR implementer, Brandon)
• Angola (VR implementer, Brandon)
• Cameroon (CHAI implementer, Satish)- the country team in Cameroon presented the CHAI-VR OpenLMIS concept note to GAVI late last week. We are yet to hear back from them. I will keep you posted as soon as I have any updates from the country team. As of now, the concept note only has a high level approach and solution sans the budget. Once GAVI responds positively, we will work on building a more comprehensive proposal.
• Malawi

Implementation Opportunities for more details.

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 Roundtable

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.

Moving Forum Discussion from Google Groups to Discourse

*There was not time to address this agenda item. It was mainly an update that we will move forward to Discourse, so no need to include it in next month's agenda

Discussion and Decision

Update: after weighing the potential costs and benefits of shifting community conversations to Discourse, the community stewards decided that this is a 'value-add' and want to move forward with it

Any questions or reservations from the group on this?

Highlighting the current gaps:

• Google Groups:
  • Does not fill the gap between real time communication (Slack) and email.
  • Ends up being another funnel into our inboxes
  • Lacks advanced forum features like categories, user/community management, user individualization/progression, etc

Proposal for Discourse (based on feedback from Craig):

1. Discourse would be the main entry point into the OpenLMIS community for new members
2. The system should require an account but one that can be freely made by the user. User categorization can be used to denote users with more experience within the community (see OpenMRS Developer Stages)
3. I think that Discourse would incorporate:
   1. Google Groups discussions
   2. Public project-related email
   3. Some of what currently goes into Slack
   4. Some the discussions currently occurring within the wiki

Conflict of Interest

(September agenda is packed, so we will cover this in our October meeting)

Community Meeting