Community-minded: How openIMIS has evolved into a thriving Digital Public Good
From its earliest days the openIMIS Initiative committed to building a global community around its digital solutions for health financing and social protection. Eight years and millions of beneficiaries later, it’s clear that this wager has paid off.
Not long ago, the openIMIS Initiative quietly reached a major milestone: after years of incremental expansion, more than 25 million people are officially accessing health and social protection benefits via programmes run using its digital solutions. In less than a decade, openIMIS has evolved from a standalone health insurance management software into a mature Digital Public Good (DPG) which multiple countries rely on to facilitate citizens’ access to cash payments, compensation following workplace accidents and free health services at point of care.
How openIMIS managed to do this – and the role which the openIMIS community of software developers, implementers and partners has played in this transformation – is the subject of this article. Interest in Digital Public Goods has soared in recent years as their advantages in terms of efficiency and flexibility have become more widely understood, and as discussions about Digital Public Infrastructure have gained momentum. Yet despite their growing popularity, Digital Public Goods have not led to the paradigm shift in digital service delivery which some anticipated and there are questions about business models for sustaining them in the longer term. At a moment when Digital Public Goods are at something of a crossroads, a look at openIMIS’ journey may offer some useful insights.
openIMIS prioritised community building from day one
The openIMIS Initiative, which is financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the European Union, has pursued an open and inclusive strategy from day one. ‘We knew from the experiences of established open source health solutions, such as DHIS2 and OpenMRS, that it’s essential to engage software developers, implementers and users in continuously improving the product,’ explains Saurav Bhattarai, who leads the work on openIMIS at the Global Alliances for Social Protection programme at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). ‘We deliberately set out to replicate this approach, even if it meant investing extra time at the outset.’
The core of the community emerged in 2016 as the openIMIS Initiative worked with a small group of professional software developers to transform the original software, first developed in Tanzania for the management of community health insurance schemes, into an open source product and to publish its source code on GitHub. The companies involved amassed expertise on the inner workings of openIMIS and became key resources for developers in various countries who were keen to explore how the software could be adapted for their own use cases.
The openIMIS wiki, as well as monthly implementers’ and developers’ calls facilitated by advisors at the openIMIS Coordination Desk, hosted at GIZ, were – and continue to be – the key platforms through which new and experienced users and contributors share information, flag bugs for fixing, and incubate ideas for new features. These and other community tools ensure that knowledge and expertise about openIMIS remain decentralised, rather than concentrated in the hands of a single entity. This, in turn, feeds contributors’ commitment and sense of ownership towards a product they are part of further developing and refining.
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A diverse ecosystem of service providers
By 2020 openIMIS had been designated an emergent Global Good and was being used in five countries to support health financing and employment injury insurance schemes serving approximately five million beneficiaries. Today, it is used in 13 countries to administer programmes reaching more than 25 million beneficiaries, including recipients of cash transfers. openIMIS’ expansion from health financing into social protection – which began during the COVID-19 pandemic when a local company in The Gambia adapted openIMIS to manage an emergency cash transfer scheme – has been greatly enhanced by the integration of new functionalities originally developed by the World Bank.
Over these very busy past four years, the openIMIS Initiative has issued 30 tenders for software development services aimed at either further developing the core product (as with the integration of CORE-MIS features) or customising openIMIS for use in specific country implementations. Each additional work package broadens and strengthens the contributor community: to date, 23 teams from 19 countries have participated in software development projects and become experts in its solutions.
SolDevelo, a software firm based in Gdynia, Poland, has been working with openIMIS for five years and straddles both levels. It supports the implementation of openIMIS for an employment voucher scheme for informal workers in Moldova and oversaw the integration of openIMIS and CORE-MIS functionalities. Recently it has also collaborated with GIZ Bangladesh, which is supporting the establishment of an employment injury protection scheme for workers in the leather and textile industries, to train local software developers in openIMIS.
‘We see the value in this kind of training. Having more developers working with openIMIS and contributing to the core solution enhances openIMIS in general,’ says Artur Lebiedziński, an IT project manager with SolDevelo. ‘openIMIS is an ecosystem we work in, and we believe there are a lot of benefits to strengthening it.’
openIMIS’ federated structure makes it possible for members of the community to develop their own business models using openIMIS – fully apart from any connection to the openIMIS Initiative. ‘It’s been very exciting to see local developers strike out on their own and create new opportunities,’ says Uwe Wahser, an advisor with the openIMIS Coordination Desk. ‘Companies like 2MCorp in The Gambia and TinkerTech in Nepal are now leveraging their expertise with openIMIS and growing the market for services in their own countries and regions.’
©GIZ/Umong Shahi
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Engagement with international partners and initiatives is another success factor
The openIMIS community extends beyond programmers and software companies to include a range of international organisations and digital initiatives working towards universal health and social protection. The Initiative has built close relationships, for example, with organisations which support the delivery of social protection programmes at a large scale, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Social Security Organization (ISSA), the World Bank and the World Food Programme (WFP). ‘As members of the openIMIS Stakeholder Committee these partners offer invaluable perspectives on social protection challenges and bring a deep understanding of the functional requirements for digital solutions for the delivery of health and social protection,’ says Konstanze Lang, an advisor with the openIMIS Coordination Desk. ‘Along with bilateral organisations such as Enabel and Expertise France, they have been instrumental in supporting new implementations, pointing their partners to open source solutions and convincing them of the value of Digital Public Goods.’
The openIMIS Initiative has also forged strategic links with institutions committed to the development and deployment of Digital Public Goods, such as the Digital Public Goods Alliance and Digital Square. It contributes to initiatives such as openHIE and the Digital Convergence Initiative which promote global standards for interoperability. These allow openIMIS to exchange information seamlessly with other information systems and make it possible for openIMIS and other Digital Public Goods to draw upon, and contribute to, the core elements of Digital Public Infrastructure (i.e. identification, data exchange, payments).
A valued space for shared learning
Eight years into the journey, the team behind the openIMIS Initiative looks with satisfaction upon the dynamic and inclusive Digital Public Good which has taken shape. ‘openIMIS is an example of a “real” DPG, in the sense that it has been built from the bottom up and is still steered by its community of contributors and users,’ says Saurav Bhattarai of GIZ. ‘It remains open and transparent for anyone to use, and new contributors are always welcome.’
‘Becoming reliant on a single organisation or supplier is a huge challenge for organisations working in health and development,’ says Carl Fourie, the Deputy Director of Digital Services at PATH and an expert on Digital Public Goods who has observed openIMIS’ development over the years. ‘A community that comes together around a particular initiative or Digital Public Good is critical to avoid vender lock-in. But more than this, it is key to create a space for shared learning. When various implementing parties and interested groups can connect with one another and jointly share knowledge, it makes the sum of the parts greater than if they were just held individually. This is what we’re seeing coming out of the openIMIS space and it’s been a privilege to watch it grow.’
Karen Birdsall
February 2025