OpenLMIS Governance Call Nov 17th - Meeting Notes

[Sarah Jackson]

The governance committee met today and discussed the following topics:

• Sharing OpenLMIS Opportunities – what are protocols for sharing business development opportunities, and what opportunities are we currently seeing?
• Governance Committee Make-Up/ Country Participation – How do we support greater country participation in OpenLMIS leadership? Should country reps be added to the governance committee?
• Re-Architecture – How will governance committee participate in upcoming OpenLMIS re-architecture? Do we need an ad-hoc call to discuss this?

For answers to these questions and more, see the full meeting notes available on the wiki: https://openlmis.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=33685540

Also note that the monthly community meeting has now officially been repurposed as the governance call, and the meeting invitation and wiki have been updated accordingly.

Thanks!

Sarah

[Gaurav]

Hi everyone,

One of the things we discussed on yesterday's call was how we can involve country MOH representatives and there were some concerns and ideas shared. I think we all agree that its important to have countries be involved meaningfully and for them to have a voice/role in shaping Open LMIS. I wonder if we should set up a "client/end-user" group that can have representation on the governance committee (and on the other 2 committees for that matter). I know that this can complicate things a little and I am happy to support better ways of doing this. I think there are at least three things that can be huge positives in this approach:

1. a group like this could allow countries to discuss individual country interests and prioritize requirements for the overall system, limiting the need for other non-MOH members to "manage" expectations 

2.  the group's representative will be answerable to his/her colleagues and this could drive participation and engagement, and

3. discussions/buy-in on new deployments, access to relevant data/information and sustainability models will be easier to have and inclusive

Happy to discuss this more and would love to get your thoughts on this.

Thanks,

Gaurav

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[Sarah Jackson]

Hi Gaurav,

I think this is a great idea. If I understand what you are saying, we would form an OpenLMIS Users Group, and that group would nominate a rep to participate in the governance committee. I like this idea because it gets countries talking to each other about OpenLMIS, and lets the users group work directly together to advance the ideas that are important to them. I would also like to see this group having physical meetings once a year (or so) in addition to the calls, and I think we could try to find the funding for that in the current grant.

On the governance call we decided that the best next step would be to toss these ideas out to the country teams so they could get feedback from their ministry counterparts. Here is a draft of a note I think we could all forward to our in-country colleagues. I'd like some feedback on the approach of this note before we distribute. Marasi – do you have any input on the approach below?

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Hello All -

As we start to bring together a broad community of stakeholders to work on the OpenLMIS project, we are seeking ways to increase country-level ministry involvement in the OpenLMIS community. Currently, the OpenLMIS community has three main committees (governance, product, and technical) that are meeting monthly or bi-weekly, which are constituted by members from the organizations that current work on OpenLMIS (JSI, PATH, CHAI, ThoughtWorks, VillageReach, etc.). We'd like your help and opinion on what the best approach would be to increase country participation in the community. We have some initial questions to gauge interest, and it would be helpful if you could work with ministry stakeholders in your country to get their input on the items below. In addition, if you have other ideas, we are eager to hear your country team's opinion on what would work best. 

OpenLMIS Country Participation Questionnaire

1. OpenLMIS is intended to be a multi-country effort that supports the priorities of Ministries of Health. What discussion topics would be of interest to you, and encourage you to join OpenLMIS community calls?
   • Prioritizing New Features Needed in the System
   • Sharing Successes, Challenges, and Lessons Learned with Other Countries
   • Helping New Countries Considering Adopting OpenLMIS
   • Collaborating on Seeking Funding for OpenLMIS Sustainment
   • Hearing Updates on What is Happening in the OpenLMIS Community
   • Other: What?
2. Who are potential representatives that would be willing to participate in the OpenLMIS community? Please list name and title. Ideally we are looking for someone who leads or sits on a ICT committee, or a logistics working group, and has practical knowledge of the OpenLMIS implementation and their countries needs regarding LMIS. 
3. Which of the following mechanisms for participating in the community would you country prefer to participate in:
   • OpenLMIS Country User Groups meeting composed of representatives from multiple countries. User group would set the agenda for their meetings, which could include topics such as feature needs, sustainability, funding, and upgrades. We would hope to bring the user group together for a physical conference when possible. The user group would elect one representative to participate on the OpenLMIS Governance Committee.
   • Country representatives join the current OpenLMIS Governance Committee. This committee is tasked with leading the OpenLMIS community, including defining community decision-making processes, seeking out funding for the community, and collaboratively working on new country implementation opportunities. We would work to include country representation priorities on the agenda for these meetings, however it is likely that there will be some topics that will be of less interest to ministry personnel.    See agenda from the last governance committee meeting here: https://openlmis.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=33685540