2.            Requirements for the IT solution

2.1       Description of the existing IT solution

      I.        Software Stack

After a migration of the openIMIS codebase from proprietary technologies to a full open source technology stack, the following frameworks are now in use and recommended as reference technologies for running an openIMIS instance:

• Web-Frontend: React JS

• Backend: Python (Django)

• Data Access: GraphQL

• Database: PostgreSQL (recommended), but MS SQL is still supported

• Packaging: Docker

• Server: Linux (recommended), but any server OS supporting docker will work

    II.        Previous Results of the openIMIS Initiative

The openIMIS Initiative together with other development partners has previously supported the maintenance and support of the openIMIS product. The results include among others:

• A harmonised version (main) was created from the country specific adaptations of the openIMIS software package and migrated to a modular architecture using open source technologies and implementing international interoperability standards. It is available in a public code repository and updated regularly with recent code contributions. (https://github.com/openimis )

• A regular release cycle according to a defined change management process was established and successfully applied since 2019.

• A technical roadmap was developed as a living and constantly updated technical document based on a series of workshops with different stakeholders and ongoing technical strategy discussions. (Product Roadmap )

• Community platforms were set up as resource repositories and communication channels for the openIMIS community. A regularly maintained helpdesk was set up and established.

• A sandbox environment to demonstrate openIMIS features and its interoperability options was set up for testing and show-casing which will be enhanced to host demo installations of openIMIS solutions in different interoperability scenarios by this contract.

• In a series of migration projects, functionality of the CORE-MIS software package by the World Bank was migrated to openIMIS. ()

2.2       Description of the application/use of the IT solution

openIMIS is an interoperable, versatile open source software which supports the administration of health financing and social protection schemes. It is designed to manage the complex, high-volume data flows which are required to operate such schemes by seamlessly integrating beneficiary, provider and payer data. More than 10 million people in 7 countries benefit from health insurance, employment injury insurance, cash transfer and voucher schemes managed using openIMIS.

2.3       General conditions at the partner end

      I.        General Conduct

The staff members seconded by the Firm of Consultants must cooperate closely with the GIZ project officer who is responsible to BMZ for the German and Swiss contributions to the openIMIS Initiative and the programme officer appointed for this contract. All activities of the Firm of Consultants have to be done in line with and on the basis of ongoing activities of the openIMIS Initiative to achieve all programme outputs (see chapter 1.IV above).

Ongoing activities that must be taken into account and built upon during this assignment are:

1. activities of the openIMIS Initiative geared towards community building and regional support structures. This activity is supplemented by additional contracts for regional openIMIS hubs.

2. activities of the openIMIS Initiative geared towards implementation support for new scheme operators.

3. software development as well as release and solution management by other contractors and implementation partners.

4. active involvement of the openIMIS Initiative in the interoperability networks OpenHIE, GovStack and the Digital Convergence Initiative in Social Protection.

5. Merger with the CORE-MIS software from the WorldBank

Developments that may lead to difficulties in a later project phase should be identified as quickly as possible. Furthermore, in view of the focus on the results described above, results monitoring is crucially important. An efficient monitoring and evaluation system must therefore be proposed and set up that allows all entities of the openIMIS governance structure, the Firm of Consultants and the GIZ Global Programme GASP to monitor project progress. Progress reports are submitted quarterly based on a format which will be agreed upon during the inception. Regular feedback sessions may be convened by the GIZ Global Programme GASP depending on the progress of the assigned tasks. The Firm of Consultants is expected to respond to changes flexibly, especially if the project is in danger of straying from outputs mentioned in Chapter 1.

    II.        Integration into the Existing openIMIS Structures

The openIMIS initiative builds upon existing software for health insurance management that is being used by insurance organisations in several countries already. Although the migration of openIMIS to the new modular architecture is completed and the legacy version will not be included in future releases any more, continuous support for smooth operations of those legacy implementations is still important to this commission. Besides simply operating openIMIS, these local organisations also support the openIMIS Initiative with own code developments, which need to be integrated into the core system on a regular basis.

Within the openIMIS governance structure regular exchange meetings are foreseen for different stakeholders, some of which are also relevant for the Firm of Consultants. In the context of this commission, the Firm of Consultants is currently especially expected to take part in the weekly calls of the Developers Committee and the monthly review calls but might be invited for additional events – online or in person.

   III.        Co-operation with Partners of the openIMIS Initiative

In order to build a sustainable community of practice, the openIMIS Initiative is co-operating with various international partners and sub-contracting other consultants. The Firm of Consultants is expected to work together with these partners in a co-operative and friendly way, respecting and supporting the work of others and disclosing relevant information where necessary. Apart from the consultants that work on the ongoing activities mentioned in chapter 2.I and those who work on short term consultancies, the openIMIS initiative currently co-operates closely with other players such as the OpenHIE community, the GovStack Initiative, the Digital Convergence Initiative and other Digital Public Good Initiatives from related sectors. Finally, it can be expected that free implementers and developers who are interested in the project want to associate and contribute to the project. The openIMIS Initiative has a special interest to nourish this kind of relations through a welcoming community culture of trust.

2.4       Functional Requirements

      I.        System Components of the Sandbox

The contractor identifies the needed system-components tother with the Product Group to reflect specific use cases and workflows of openIMIS in interoperable health and social protections scenarios. On this basis the contractor selects software and non-software products (e.g. documentation) from the official releases of the selected DPGs or from openIMIS solution bundles. The scenarios will be prioritized with a focus on the technical feasibility based on existing functionality of commonly used DPGs.

The Sandbox will show-case openIMIS in the context of interoperability scenarios from the following standards (see also chapter 2.5.2 below):

a)    The openHIE Initiative for the Health Sector

• Social Health Insurance with claiming (openIMIS Solution)

• Voucher programme (openIMIS Solution)

• Social Health Insurance with capitation (openIMIS Solution)

• Central patient register (openIMIS Solution)

• Product catalogue (openIMIS Solution)

• EMR (e.g. openMRS, BAHMNI)

• HMIS (e.g. DHIS2)

b)    The DCI Initiative for Social Protection

• Unconditional Cash Transfer (CORE-MIS - openIMIS Solution)

• UBR/dynamic BR (openIMIS Solution)

• Farmer registry (openIMIS Solution)

• OpenSPP

c)    The GovStack Initiative for cross-sectoral infrastructure.

• Mediator (e.g. OpenHIM, openFN, X-Roads)

• Payment Gateway (e.g. Mojaloop Test App)

• Financial Ledger (e.g. MIFOS, ODOO, Trython)

• CRVS (e.g. OpenCRVS)

Most of these scenarios are already in use in productive environments. The above system components are pre-sorted according to priority within each sector. The final prioritization will be determined based on the estimated workload that is required to install the respective DPG.

The relevant workflows will be discussed with the openIMIS co-ordination desk. The contractor is expected to generate and maintain meaningful synthetic data across the system components in adequate volumes.

    II.        Configuration Options

The contractor is requested to identify existing configuration options of openIMIS and other DPGs that allow to configure the needed use cases into the DPGs. These need to be stored and versioned e.g. in docker scripts that will then serve as templates for rapidly rebuilding the sandbox and the test data or can serve other Implementation Partners to refactor the solution to their own scenarios. The strict preference is on configuration vs. customization and scripted configuration vs. manual configuration on the fly. Contractors are explicitly encouraged to suggest synergies and co-operations with external projects of a similar nature such as Instant-OpenHIE or GovStack.

If the existing configuration options are not sufficient, the contractor is expected to suggest and implement improvements in the openIMIS base package in close collaboration with the developers’ committee.

   III.        Additional Functionality

This tender is not looking at extending the existing openIMIS modules or solution bundles. However, in some cases there might be the need to add functionality if the resulting solution would not be able to perform at least essential duties of the respective use-case. It is already foreseeable that the contractor will need to provide an openIMIS module for a minimum viable set of APIs according to the DCI standard.

  IV.        Quality Assurance

The contractor is assuming a proxy role for Implementation Partners and is expected to base their work on the existing artifacts from the official openIMIS releases and solution bundles: gaps or defects of these need to be communicated to the developers’ committee and to a small extend fixed in close collaboration with the maintenance team. It is already foreseeable that the contractor will have to update the existing user and installation documentation. Each system component shall be documented in their current status on a respective wiki page in the existing sandbox overview.

2.5       Non-functional requirements

The following non-functional requirements must be taken into account by the contractor when implementing the service.

2.5.1 Interfaces

openIMIS provides external access to data and functionalities through standard APIs. The currently used standard is based on the specifications of the HL7 FHIR version 4. The APIs are documented in the openIMIS implementation guide:

Additional standards will be added according to demand. Currently the emerging standards of the Digital Convergence Initiative for Social Protection are under revision. The existing DCI definitions will need to be implemented as openIMIS APIs in the context of this tender to an extend that is needed to reflect essential DCI workflows.

Navigation across the system components will not require an integrated low-code user interface – a user-friendly link list in the openIMIS wiki that points to the native user-interfaces of each digital public good shall be sufficient.

2.5.2    System requirements/technical framework

The openIMIS Initiative is committed to operate according to international development principles that are endorsed by the supporting GDC and SDC and correspond to the guiding principles of GIZ. The Firm of Consultants is especially expected to comply to

• the Principles for Digital Development ( )

• the Digital Investment Principles ( )

As one direct consequence, the development of openIMIS is oriented at standards set by

• the Business Process Framework for National Health Insurance Information Systems elaborated through the Joint Learning Network (JLN)

• the World Bank Sourcebook on the Foundations of Social Protection Delivery Systems

• the security recommendations of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)

• the digital health architecture of the Open Health Information Exchange (OpenHIE) community of practice.

• the interoperability specification for Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) by the Health Level Seven International Organisation (HL7) 

• the emerging standards GovStack and Digital Convergence Initiative for Social Protection

The Firm of Consultants is expected to align with the ambitions of the openIMIS Initiative to further harmonise openIMIS with those standards in terms of terminology, workflows and interoperability.

2.6       Use of open source software (OSS)

Being an Open Source project itself, the openIMIS initiative strongly supports the use of Open Source Software in the given context. The Firm of Consultants must be willing to use Open Source Software where possible and avail all software and non-software products in a timely manner to the openIMIS Initiative in source versions that can be further maintained with Open Source tools without loss of product quality.

2.7       Hosting

The openIMIS Initiative is hosting all community platforms and communications channels with an eye on sustainability. Code-repositories, documentation servers etc run on free web-platforms that are common in open source development to allow continuity beyond funded project phases. Only the demo servers of the openIMIS sandbox environment are hosted on a commercial server.

The existing repositories, communication channels and community platforms that were established by the openIMIS Initiative shall be used. They were set up according to best practices in the community and are running at production scale. Specifically, these are

• openIMIS code repositories ( )

• openIMIS issue tracker (https://openimis.atlassian.net)

• openIMIS documentation server ( )

• openIMIS wiki ( )

• openIMIS translation platform ( )

• openIMIS chat channel ( )

The openIMIS demo instances run on two hosted root-servers. These were already contracted by the co-ordination desk and run on AMD Ryzen 5 processors (6-Core) with 64 GB RAM and 1.8 TB hard disk each.

The contractor shall provide the following hosting services:

• Maintain one of the commercial root-servers that run the openIMIS sandbox environment.

2.8       Further specifications/general conditions

1.            Responsibilities of the contractor

The contractor must deliver the following services and work packages (along with the corresponding milestones). The work packages have no chronological order and can also be implemented on an integrated basis, depending on the development methodology:

1.1      Work package 1: Needs Analysis and Roadmap

1. Together with the openIMIS Product Group, identify and analyse relevant use cases, workflows and system components for sandbox scenarios in the OpenHIE and DCI frameworks with a focus on health financing and social protection.

2. Analyse openIMIS interoperability capabilities with regards to the data exchange specifications of the OpenHIE and DCI frameworks.

3. Analyse the needed solutions to allow an estimation of the essentially needed investments to install each solution package in an interoperability scenario.

4. In a collaborative process with all involved partners (compare chapter 3), set up a lean and agile strategy for building the sandbox based on the analysis results from the previous points and update the technical roadmap accordingly.

3.2       Work package 2: Implementation (Sprints per System-Component)

1. Apply essential code-changes and extensions to the openIMIS software packages that are needed for the selected interoperability scenarios.

2. Closely co-operate with other software development projects managed by the openIMIS Initiative and initiate changes and feature requests that support a smooth integration of openIMIS into the chosen interoperability scenarios.

3. Provide a reasonable set of synthetic data that allow showcasing the use of openIMIS in different interoperability scenarios. The generation of the synthetic data should be automated and scalable to higher data volumes for performance testing.

4. Provide mechanisms that allow for an automatic installation and relaunch of the sandbox (e.g. through docker packages) with the synthetic test-data.

5. Install each system component into the sandbox environment.

6. Do extensive developer and integration tests of the interoperability scenarios.

7. Document all changes in the appropriate platforms (including inline code documentation) and initiate secondary documentation changes (e.g. user manuals, translations).

3.3       Work package 3: Roll Out and Maintenance

1. Ensure the proper functioning of the sandbox environment.

2. Provide a simple and unified access to the implemented system components through a user-friendly link-list or map and specific user guides.

3. Monitor the openIMIS release cycle and verify compatibility of the new openIMIS versions with the interoperability scenarios.

4. Constantly monitor the public issue queue and review single issues in a timely manner.

5. Draft and review change requests together with the requestor and identify the importance of these change requests.

6. Support community managers, trainers and higher support levels with technical expertise. This includes support during technical workshops, capacity development activities and product presentations.

7. Provide basic support to user organisations who want to install openIMIS in similar scenarios.