Steering Group Meeting: openIMIS ‒ Digital Public Goods in Social Protection

Date: 25.11.2021

Place: virtual, WebEx session

In a nutshell

openIMIS, an open source software to manage health financing and social protection schemes, has been certified as a digital public good by the Digital Public Good Alliance. Since Sep 2021 it is listed in the digital public goods registry.

On 25 November the Steering Group Meeting took place with focus on the topic of Digital Public Goods in social protection. Over 50 experts from bilateral implementing agencies, donors and international organisations working in the fields of digitalisation, health and social protection participated in the virtual meeting.

Session I, facilitated by BMZ, introduced an example of an implementing agency which took up openIMIS in its health programmes in Niger, Mauritania and Zanzibar: Enabel presented its implementations via two approaches, within a bilateral programme in Niger and through the WeHubit programme in Zanzibar, implemented by PharmAccess.

In session II (panel discussion) collaboration between Digital Public Goods in social protection formed the center of discourse between experts from the ILO, World Bank (CoreMIS), UNICEF (HOPE), the Social Protection Convergence Initiative and the openIMIS Coordination Desk. SDC facilitated the exchange around interoperability and standard building in social protection, reflected from the side of users and their needs as well as from the angle of providers of digital solutions in social protection and their contributions.

On behalf of the openIMIS initiative and its Steering Group – the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) - invited the attending experts and organisations to join the openIMIS Steering Group and become part of its journey.

Agenda

Open

Participants

Overall 50+ participants

• Country/implementation representatives; experts from bilateral implementing agencies, donors and international organisations working in the areas of digitalisation, health and social protection; supporter and organiser team

• Represented organisations (tbc): ADB, WHO, World Bank, WFP, UNICEF, ILO, ISSA, EU, KfW, Global Fund, AFD, Enable, PATH, PharmAccess, 2M Corp, Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province Health Association (BEPHA) Cameroon, Asien eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), Health Informatics in Africa (HELINA), BlueSquare, SwissTPH

• Organiser: BMZ, SDC, openIMIS initiative (GIZ)

Sitemap (and summary of inputs)

• Warm-up

• Opening remarks by BMZ and SDC

• openIMIS digest

• Implementation of a digital public good (session I)

• Collaboration between digital public goods (session II, panel discussion)

• Wrap-up

Documentation and resources

• Minutes reader (available in Jan 2022)

• openIMIS factsheet

• openIMIS pitch