 There's not much to do, but we are even recording. Can you hear me while I'm shouting out here? Yes, I can. Oh, good, good, good, good, good. Because why we are using the mic is actually for the soon to arrive. It's not that I know my voice works, but it's also nice when there's humors all the time here. So I want to welcome you all for this very interesting session on global digital public good. Wow, it's called digital public good. Actually, but we, as in the years, we have put the global in because we really think that. Because we really believe that the global aspect of digital public good is super important. So we'll spend the next two hours. Actually, this is a long session, so be patient. But be prepared for three very interesting presentations and then a panel discussion afterwards. And in the panel discussions, you all are allowed to comment as well. So we put it in the panel here, people here up front, the presenters plus a representative from Nora, a representative from Minister of Health in Sri Lanka, and a representative of the Minister of Health in Timorest. So we can also bring in conference. So we will start the whole show with Martin presenting the global public good. The public good. Alliance where she actually are second these days from Nora, and she will give us a bit of a background of this alliance and the digital public good. Then a palm wood from our own this center and this chunk of will talk about the example of sustainability of a deep because the topic of this session is how to sustain the deep. The only the, the, the aim is to have a deputy, I mean, global public good available for people, it also need to be there over time, be relevant, be up to having a community. So this is them. So the topic of this session, we will kind of shed light for different differences, and we also have invited up to to present also from their point of view how they work on sustainability of digital public good globally. And then after that we will then continue with the with the panel. So, let me now just give the word for a little matter to tell us a bit about how it all kind of started on this alliance of philanthropics and other global actors that are behind this DPG Alliance. Over to you. Thank you so much, Christine and just confirming that you can hear me okay and see the slides on the screen. Very well. Okay. So, as Christine said, my name is leave north hug and I'm calling the secretariat for the digital public good so lines. And I just wanted to start by saying how sorry I am that I cannot be there in person with you because I'm actually only 10 kilometers away. But I am on medical leave due to complications during surgery and I'm therefore extremely happy that Christine and Pam would allow me to address you virtually. Because I do know that this annual convening that you're part of is indeed a physical annual committee and I'm very grateful for the exception that has been made for me. And also the benefit is that if I say something completely stupid. I can blame it on my medical condition, which I will do. Um, here is a very brief agenda for what I will cover today. I will speak about digital public goods. I will try to be a little bit more clear on concepts than what Christine was and only use digital public goods. This is about the digital public goods alliance. And I will end my presentation by sneaking in a tiny call to action, given the audience that I know is there today. So, let me start with explaining what digital public goods are. The very brief version is that they are open source technologies that have been built to adhere to relevant best practices and do no harm, and that they advance the sustainable development goals. The concept of digital public goods may indeed sound like really old news to you guys in the history community. And you're absolutely right. You came here first. When the UN Secretary General established a high level panel on digital cooperation in 2018. His aim was to identify digital cooperation mechanisms that could help accelerate attainment of the sustainable development goals. Norway had a minister in that panel. And I was his advisor in the process. And we immediately pointed to DHS to and his as a highly interesting case. And as part of the consultations during that high level panel we also came across highly relevant open source work happening in India, leveraging the experiences of India building its own digital public infrastructure. And therefore I'm also very, very glad that Opti is in the room today. And they can share a lot more about that story. But just to conclude, I can truthfully say that the DHS to and his big sample was a key inspiration for the founding of the digital public goods alliance in 2019. And for the definition of digital public goods that you see highlighted on this slide, which was presented by the UN Secretary General in his 2020 roadmap for digital cooperation. So the concept of the digital public goods goes beyond the software to also include content data, standards and AI models. But today is something we are not, we are still on the first slide. That is very annoying. I don't know whether you have changed it, but okay, good. Now we have the digital public goods standards, so are we then on the same? Yeah, we are sorry about that. That's a little bit annoying because then I can see my nose, but that let's let's try to keep it this way. So this is a digital public good standard, and it really has three components. It's about advancing the sustainable development goals. It's about open source and it's about do no harm. So this is an area for the digital public goods alliance maintains this standard, and it has been operationalized into nine criteria so this builds off the definition by the UN Secretary General that I think you probably didn't see earlier. If I was still on my first slide. That's the disadvantage of showing things from home. So this is a key part of our work as the digital public goods alliance secretariat. And in order for a digital solution to become a digital public good. There's a process where a technology is nominated. Then there's a technical review against these nine criteria. And then there is recognition on the registry as a digital public good. I think actually the number now is 153 because I think we added just a couple or more in the last few days. So even this is outdated. So I think the number now if you access our website, you will see that there are 153 verified digital public goods on the website and the DPG registry and you will see that the majority of these are mainly categorized as open source so there are often open data and open content components as well. So just a little bit more about the digital public goods alliance and I did mention initially that it stems from this high level panel of digital cooperation that the UN Secretary General established in 2018 where his aim was to identify really groundbreaking mechanisms that could accelerate attainment of the sustainable development goals in the digital sphere. This led to the formation of the digital public goods alliance in December 2019. It's co-founded by the governments of Norway and Sierra Leone UNICEF and the Indian think tank ice spirit. And today we also have UNDP and the German BM set federal ministry in the board. And the secretariat is co-hosted by Noura UNDP UNICEF and BM set and I'm seconded from Noura as you said Christian. And you can see on this slide, which I'm really hoping that you can see so please jump in Christian if you can't. That we have a number of members, we're around 30 members now and it ranges between countries philanthropic foundations, a lot of UN entities and think tanks and so on and we're expanding quite rapidly. And we're very encouraged by this growth. I want to suggest a little bit about how we work because the whole idea of this multi-stakeholder alliance is that the sum should be greater than its individual parts. We are united by a strategy, a five year strategy that has four strategic objectives, and they are around the discoverability and sustainability and accessibility of digital public goods. It's also about the capacity of various types of institutions, particularly in the multilateral system like the UN in different UN institutions, but also others to promote and support DPG adoption and including to support countries. And then it's very much around strengthening country capacity both to implement digital public goods and also to create, maintain and evolve these digital public goods locally over time. And just to be clear, when we talk about country implementation as part of three and four, any financing or resourcing we mobilized through the digital public goods alliance is directed towards countries that are eligible for official development assistance. And the reasoning being that that is also where there is most lagging in attainment of the sustainable development goals and where the needs are greatest. But it is indeed an alliance that unifies countries across different income levels, and I think that's a very fundamental part. And as I said, we're more than the sum of our parts. And one of the key ways we ensure this is that we have different types of activities where we drive a lot of core functionalities from the secretariat. For instance, the maintenance of the DPG standard, the registry, we also can be in something called communities of practice. And then we have coordinated activities which we do together with members from the secretariat. We're about 10 people in the secretariat. But I would say that the majority of our value add is happening in what we call aligned activities. And these are activities that are driven by different stakeholders that are in alignment with the strategic objectives of the alliance, but they're driven independently. And all of this is tied together around the concept of digital public goods and the DPG standard. So I mentioned communities of practice and this is one of our key ways of advancing, sorry, are using of advancing higher, higher relevance technologies. So we, so we can be in different experts around topics that are particularly urgent. So for instance, in health, we had one around immunization delivery management. So that was coconut with UNICEF. We've also coconut with FAU around food security and climate change adaptation. And we have had a community of practice around the early grade reading. We have a hand around open data. We have one ongoing now around open AI models. And we have also recently had a big campaign to source new open source technologies that can help fight information pollution and restore information integrity. And I'm aware that this is also a huge challenge in health. So I wanted you to be aware of that. As I circle in and narrow in here, I wanted to bring your attention to a topic that is particularly central now within the work of the DPGA. And which I know that APTI will probably speak very forcefully to. And that is around digital public infrastructure and digital public infrastructure. There are, they are the society-wide digital capabilities that are essential to participation in society and markets. And examples of them include digital identity and civil registries, real-time payments and secure data exchange. You will probably have heard about a lot of these, particularly now under the Indian G20 leadership and presidency, as exemplified by the Indian statute. And we do see that there is tremendous demand right now from countries to build out their digital public infrastructure and to leverage digital public goods in the process. Some of the reasons for that is that countries have experienced over the years tremendous challenges with proprietary models and vendor lock-in that have locked them into long-term fairly rigid contracts where they don't have the ability to ensure interoperability between these different very foundational components. And we do see that there are more and more countries that are there for turning to open source and where digital public goods are particularly curated subset, I would say, within that. So this is an area where there is a lot of attention and interest right now. And of course, it plugs directly into the work that is happening more at the sector level and systems that are being deployed in different sectors, management information systems. I do think that the interest is extremely relevant also because it's being deployed in so many sectors beyond health. So I do see that it's a great interest, I think, how we can link up some of these communities and some of these processes that are ongoing. And that brings me to, when I was starting, I said I wanted to end this with a call to action because I do think that, I mean, there are so many things that can be learned from DHIS to and from his. It's, as I said, also in the beginning, it is in many ways one of the cases that really helped originate and drive the establishment of the DPGA and the concept of digital public goods alongside a few other initiatives. And I wanted to bring us to a conclusion by expressing a bit what I really think that these other projects that are now starting to emerge in the world. There are some very interesting ones coming out of India, but also other countries. And how can we help kind of build on and leverage some of the momentum and the tremendous achievements that has has been achieved by the his community since it's, I guess it started in the mid 90s. And I'm chosen to summarize this by adapting and stealing a concept that was used during Bill Clinton's successful presidential election in 1992, when his advisor coined the term, it's the economy stupid. The situation at that time was that the current president Georgia HW Bush was, he was the incumbent and he was widely seen as not completely understanding the pains economic pains that the population were facing in terms of an economic recession that was happening. And Clinton and his campaign, they really chose to drive home the mantra of, it's the economy, it's the economy. And that was one of the reasons why they won the election. And every time I get asked about what is it that has made the tries to achieve the tremendous scale it has and and this incredibly deep and passionate global crowd that I think is in the room now. And of course I haven't learned this from Christine as well it's not only something I've invented, but it is indeed the community. And I know that this community, the his community is something that has been built painstakingly and over long term and with tremendous investments in master's students scholarships PhD scholarships, all sorts of trainings regional hubs, south of cooperation and you know the idea that countries can easier learn from countries in their own region, and that there is more trust also in regional collaboration. And I think that is such an important learning, and I would love for your help in helping kind of infuse that ethos, that way of working that grassroots mentality that bottom up mentality into all of these other DPG projects that are coming now and some of them are indeed being implemented for digital public infrastructure. One example in kind is most of the modular open source identity platform. And again I'm sure optic and speak to it so I'm not going to go into detail. I also know that Murad will like the address it later. The concept is technology for unique digital identity and verifiable. And it's currently being implemented in at least 10 countries, and, and there are many other countries that are interested. And I'm really, really hoping now, and I know there are processes underway where we can find ways of plugging in the learnings and indeed the actual communities that we have from his and the different clusters to help bring in the same way of working the same mentality, and so on to the most of implementations and indeed other types of open source implementations that are coming. Because this is really, there's a lot of demand for that. I'm therefore also extremely happy that both Sri Lanka and Timor Lester speaking afterwards. And Sri Lanka has been at the forefront of doing a lot of integrations between the HIS2 and other DPGs that are emerging now. Incidentally, both a couple that are out of India, including Daivok in health, but also most of which is in process and I know that someone can speak much more to this. I see so much promise in this work that is now being driven at the country level that can show a way of infusing the HIS mentality more broadly. I'm also, of course, extremely, extremely encouraged that Timor Lester is a part of his community. I also know that Timor Lester is exploring most of it. I don't know how that is going, but I used to live in Timor Lester for a few years and I'm very fond of Timor Lester. So very, very happy to know that you're in the panel afterwards. And I will, I also wish you the best in that journey of making decisions for your own digital public infrastructure. But I think I want to end there and leave time for questions and just say that please help us leverage the digital public goods community that you have built around the HIS2 and his community. And please help us learn and take this forward as part of a global movement. Thank you. Thank you very much. And people that sit in this chair, if there is a flinty over here, I can come around. The room is full. So come there is seats over here if you don't want to do that there. Any questions? Yeah, but we need in order for the Zoom rooms to be here. I'm glad to be here. My question. Are you able to hear me online? Yes. So my question is how is the, how is this different from Dyer Digital Impact Alliance? Because it seems like the mission and the ideas are very similar to that. Yeah, no, it's a great question. And Dyer is indeed a member of the DPGA. So I think a major difference is that Dyer is not the membership based alliance. And also that, but we collaborate closely. And also the DPGA maintains and stewards the DPG standard. So dial has been doing a lot of great work on digital transformation. And it's indeed doing a lot of work on digital public infrastructure. So, and they are a member of the DPGA. So I would say that it's, it's part of the same ecosystem. And we're very happy about the collaboration with dial. We also have path digital square. As, as a member and I'm sure they may likely be in the room as well. So we're also learning very closely with the global goods concept and the definition in our work. I hope that was clarified. Okay. So, Thaddea, Thaddea Sander with his IS research group. So my question is around not the, not the alliance standard, but standards in the, in the registry where, where there are none at the moment. And you have the vision of supporting the construction of digital public infrastructure in countries from digital public goods. But then I assume we would need open standards to be the connection between these different public goods. So some reflections around that. Yep. No, it's a great question, Thaddea, and you're, you're grappling at something that we are also very much working to, to find our stance on at the moment. And that is whether or not we should have standards as a standalone category of DPG because what we're doing now is that we are indeed encouraging open standards as part of software content data. AI models. But we have been struggling with the idea of us verifying standards by themselves because that requires a very specific set of expertise and very deep domain specific expertise. And there are many others doing that kind of work. So we are actually in process now of figuring out whether or not that is something we can do as the DPGA. And the time being, we are actually not assessing individual standards as DPGs, we're just assessing software data content and and encouraging open standards as part of that. But we agree it's a very important area and it's not something we take lightly, but that's exactly why we have not yet felt that we are ready to say that we can verify standards. I hope that made sense. Yeah, she's a positive message for education. Hello, everyone. Hi, leave my time. Thank you. So we're so nice to listen to you speak and I realize this question might actually be one that's where I should go home and do my own homework, but I also am really keen to hear your reflections on the Dunahan principle within the Alliance and the standards anticipating and thinking about how when we come up with new functionality or new ideas, how do we think to ourselves when we design in it from a Dunahan perspective, you know, I'm looking at access now and others in that space that can really share a lot with us about what happens in the world when we don't think about this. So any any light reflections and I promise to do more homework to see if there's more guidance out there on it. Yeah, no, and it's an excellent question. And I will say that we have done one sneaky thing and that is to say that we're only assessing Dunahan by design. And that's the reason for that is that we are only able to look at how technologies have been designed to minimize the risk of doing harm, but we are not able to go out and monitor the multiple implementations of an open source technology in the real world and assess how each of them is doing or not doing harm. So that is, I would say in one sense, it's a huge limitation, but at the same time it's a disclaimer because it's something we simply don't have the capacity to do. And that being said, I do think there is a lot of strength in being able to look into, for instance, how certain best practice principles and the standards related to for instance privacy and user security have been addressed in the design of a technology, which is what we do now. And also to have transparency on that because we do believe that that at least gives a lot more power to those great organizations that are doing much more accountability work and monitoring work downstream or at the country level at the implementation level to at least challenge if implementations are diverting significantly from the kind of do no harm by design principles that have been integrated. But I will not at all claim that we can ensure that any DPG in its implementation will not do any harm because we can't. That's just, that's the reality, but we're at least trying to find the best possible ways of assessing the do no harm in the design phase. Even there we're doing reviews to a certain level of depth, but we're not doing deep, deep reviews, which means also that before any actual implementation of a DPG at the country level we do indeed expect and encourage that the people do a thorough assessment of the technology, also because of the need to assess the relevance for the context. So, but yeah, I hope that was gave some useful direction on how we think. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you very much. Can you hear me. I'm prosper from his Pugana taken a call it also implementing the highest two. Yeah, my question is about the sustainability of this kind of assessment and the new lines of being in the list. So this is going to be an annual basis and some, you know, DPs can also drop off or get on to the board, but the most important also around the implication of this to the, the countries, if they're going to start using these products or also to the funders who are going to be funding this project is there a guidance or is there an implication to, to, to being on this on this list. Thank you. Thank you. It's an excellent question. And on the first part of it, I can say that yes, we do exactly as you suggested we do annual reviews of our DPGs in our registry because we want to make sure that we have first of all that they were actively maintained so we don't want to have dead, dead projects in the registry and also in the event that there has been changes to the product so that they no longer meet the standard we have actually had that happen before where there has been changes in licensing for instance that have led us to remove a technology or a DPG from the registry. So our ambition level is to do it annually and the reason for that is anything more than that is it's simply not possible for us and we want to make sure that we have a process and a registry that we can maintain. So that's kind of we have arrived at the yearly review as what is realistic and optimal for us but it's an excellent question and I fully agree that it needs to be done. The other question is also very good around funding and I will say that even though the DPGA secretariat, we are not maintaining a fund. We are collaborating very closely with funders and new financing mechanisms that are being set up. So one example is co-develop is a financing mechanism for supporting implementations of digital public infrastructure. So you will find it if you look at if you Google co-develop. So we have been very involved in helping establish that we are also working very closely. We have several philanthropic and bilateral financing entities as part of our membership. So Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Omedia Network are part of our members and of course we also have bilateral donors like Norad who will be in the panel and Eric from Norad can speak a bit more to how Norad prioritizes what it finances. So there is a financing landscape out there. I do agree it's a bit fragmented but I do think there are trends now where it's becoming more better coordinated and aligned and I'm actually quite optimistic about that. And I do think one of the challenges we face is which DPGs to double down on in the sense of how to really assess the demand and ensure that it's in line with country demand and that we prioritize the right technologies. But there's a lot of thinking and work going on around that. I hope that was helpful. Thank you. Two more questions. I'm fine. Thank you. Good. So then coffee from this percentage of Africa first. Thank you. Sorry, I'm coming back to the funding question, because you, you have asked about the recipe for DHS to success. I think some ingredient of this success are sustainable and consistent funding. So first and then championship from UI, which kind of grow the community. So if we're thinking about diver, we're thinking about Mosey, have we already identified those champions? Have we sustained a funding because if we having one term for the funding, then we won't have good chances to succeed. But if we have somebody that can commit over 10 years, for example, then we have a chance to succeed. I completely agree. And I should probably have highlighted a bit more strongly that even though the DPGA Secretariat does not provide direct funding. I think Eric from Nordic can testify that I have probably been the strongest champions that helped ensure that Nordic is financing Mosey, for instance. Now, so Noura is a core funder on Mosey together with the Gates Foundation. And I completely agree. So I strongly believe that core funding, predictable long term core funding for the DPGs that countries demand. And I think that is where I want to stress because as I mentioned, there are 153 DPGs in the registry. And I guess all of them are not as much in demand as others in the sense that there are some that are more relevant than others. So I do think it's more about which ones we double down on, but I completely agree with what you were saying and that this championship and this long term and predictable funding is absolutely critical. I once heard someone, and I think it was someone from Gates Foundation who said that, you know, if you want to buy a car, you want to know that you get service on that car for at least five years. And he was saying that, you know, it's the same for a country if you're adopting a DPG, you would at least want to know that there is a strong backing and commitment to sustain that DPG at least for five years. And I would go as far as say, you know, ideally you have a 10 year perspective. So I completely agree. Super. The last question, I mean, this is a really, you know, people, if anyone could come through digital presentations, you will have a big answer, but one more question. Okay, thank you very much. Before I raise the question, first of all, I would like to introduce myself. I am Maria Natalia. I am working for the Minister of Health in Moreleste. In the policy planning and M&E department. My question is more related to the integrated because in the Moreleste experiences that we have several digital that we use for the several programs. One is the DHS, another one is for the Liga Inan. This is the mobile message to the pregnant woman to access to the service delivery. Another one M supply and then RSATLE and then surveillance. So how we will be integrated those to the DHS. This is the become the one of the technical issue that we are finding now, because we are coming with the several apps. And then the, this is the one of the main indicator that from our boss need to be integrated all this. Thank you. So please give the solution. You know, this is, this is an excellent question and it goes a bit beyond my pay grade, but I know that there are. I'm going to be a little bit sneaky and point you to Pamud, because Pamud Amarakun who will be speaking after me and who is also following up the work in Timoreleste is I don't think there is anyone who is better placed to answer this question. So I think about integrating the DHS to with other applications and solutions and the considerations you need to make. So, so I, I think it's a, it's a great question. It's just a question that I feel I don't have the expertise to answer in with the right contextual knowledge, but I know Pamud has. On my end, I would like to say that we would warmly also welcome Timoreleste as a member of the Digital Public Goods Alliance we've had early discussions on that, and we are very encouraged to see the journey that you're embarking on and so proud and happy. So, so, but Pamud, I will actually ask you to answer that question. I don't know, Christian, if you want Pamud to do it now, or, or as part of his presentation, but I feel you're in much better hands there. The presentation coming just after, so I think that's a very big input for Pamud. And I think you should give a big hand to say this, hello, more than people have later. So, and even though, and in what has been a quick link, he's completely, she has been doing a presentation, a friendly presentation and he and I have shared people for a long time. So, you are dismissed now. Continue with Pamud. So, in all the problems there is. And then you will have a presentation and then you will have the power to solve the rest of the problems. Okay. And please keep in mind. One hour and 15 minutes or something to discuss this very very interesting topic. So thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye. When you will address the question, but that will maybe come after. Yeah, probably come after and we have a panel discussion where I think it will be a relevant question for that as well. So let me introduce the mobile is putting up his presentation from women now talk about. And it's interesting to hear that the whole global digital public good alliance of inspired by the community and the demand and the private community around the H2 as a global good so that's interesting so we will now try to to conceptualize them. The secret ingredients behind that success to see what is actually behind the software, the technology and they have the mantra of the community. And it's also the flexibility on the platform, then creating the relevance of the pattern being so close to the field with all the local in the field with all the implementers in the trade to his groups that are the eyes and the air in the fields of always make that I think it's a big. So over to the technology is on our side. Only in the stream of mouth, then it will be ready to go. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's good. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Pamod representing his center and his Sri Lanka. So I'm kind of privileged to do this presentation on sustainability of digital public good based on learnings of DHS to and I mean looking at the audience here in person as well as the people joining online I see like a lot of DHS to experts. So feel free to jump in now to any of the I mean statements I made or like maybe in the discussion after the presentation so that we'll all be able to share our experiences. Right. What you're seeing here is something that all of you are very familiar with. So this is where DHS to is currently being implemented and use. So you see like it is there in more than 100 countries across the world. Right. And out of these 100 countries I think if you look at the majority, the DHS to has been sustainable in like, at least for more than five years, or even more. So the question is, like, is there a secret recipe or something, why DHS to has been sustainable and countries are able to keep on implementing collect data, use the data. I mean, what's behind all this. So, again, let me share like our perspective. But, but again, like we can have a discussion around it. So these are a couple of dimensions that we can keep analyzing this question rather like what it takes so what does it really mean sustaining a digital public good based on learnings from the from DHS to. So, I'm going to in this presentation highlight all this in like five categories. As you can see here, I'll be talking about community and network and capacity building and research documentation and knowledge sharing platform and finally the funding. Right. So, I will just start from where live left her presentation, like she was really emphasizing right sustainability offer DH offer DPG is mostly based on the community and the network behind it. So when it comes to DHS to what's the community and the network I mean, are these the same or these are kind of two different things. In DHS to. I think most of you must be familiar, we have something called community of practice right and you may all be aware like the, the web URL that you can visit it's a community or DHS 2.org. So this is like the community of practice, but is it the DHS to community. I would rather say like this is the virtual place where we all meet right, but the community is a more of a tangible thing like we have we have people. Right, we have a lot of stakeholders some DHS to developers implementers, some administrators from the country, right. So the thing is this DHS to community of practice. I would mostly stick to this virtual environment because this is really helpful, especially during the pandemic when we were not able to kind of roam around or meet others in person and come to annual conference here in Oslo. This is where we really were able to meet and we keep on doing that right. So, this is the place it's not a kind of a developer gathering or place where developers share their ideas. It's not only for the developers. We have some areas for the developers to connect and ask their questions and get their issues clarified. And we also have places where implementers can ask questions. What is like, somebody doesn't even know about DHS to can just join the committee of practice and ask what is DHS to right. Not only that, we have also seen like sometimes like some even post job opportunities. So we needed the DHS to implement in the country X, who can apply right so yeah it's it's kind of a evolving thing it's a it's an entire community it's like a mini world of everyone who's using DHS to. So this is there, and this has really helped new countries to know what DHS to is, and for the countries who are using it to get their issues clarified. And for the developers to of course be familiar of what are the real needs of the country I will also be talking about this real needs to be very sensitive to what is happening on the ground, so that software platform can stay relevant which is very important. And this of course is like kind of the hub for this to happen. So this is the kind of broader community of practice we have. And in addition, while the community is there, we have the his network. So what's the his network. You are here in Oslo, so we have the his center in Oslo, and we have a network of partners that share a set of core values related to open source local ownership sustainability integration data use, etc. His network is the is a kind of a more close network, right, which is, as I have mentioned here, which includes a set of partners who have kind of common interest. So it works very closely with the countries, and you would also see DHS to is not there right so DHS to is just platform and his bit of is a broader network, and DHS to is supported by the his, but in addition, his piece really working very closely with the promoting country ownership, and I mean like integration, just referring back to the question asked from Timor-lessly like how to do integration so if it is not just DHS to like DHS to to XYZ platform. That's something like where we have to work very closely with the countries, and his piece doing that. And we have 22, as of now, and growing his groups which are in the network covering Africa, Asia, Latin America, and of course, including Oslo. And most of this, the hisps are led by, of course, people with academic background of having academic background as it like who have obtained doctorate degrees from the University of Oslo and other other universities. And they also have lot of implementation background working very closely with the countries. And of course, we also have as his network have very close ties with the local universities, so that rather than sitting from Oslo and trying to kind of implement things remotely. We kind of can implement things which are more contextual working with the local universities. And what you're seeing at the right corner is is a list of his groups I think all the 22 are there. So it's a very big network. While, even though it's kind of growing and big, we have close connections with each other, we have frequent meetings online and on site. The next is capacity building and research. So what is capacity building capacity building is training right. It's capacity building and training is the same. Is it the same. Yeah, no right but like, yeah somewhat related. Yes, exactly. So, I mean like one common belief is like whenever we talk about capacity building of DPG is open source solution. Yeah, it's about training right so we need to get everyone trained, and then you have the capacity in the country. It's the same, not really. So when it comes to capacity building, this is something very broad. So it doesn't really, you know, like stick only to that particular DPG. It's more about, of course, they are connected, but like it's more about working with communities organizations and individuals and working across like building skills knowledge resources. So it's it's like a whole range of competencies, but at a much broader level. It's also training. It's more targeted. And we will be able to have some specific objectives. So, the other thing that we have to know about capacity building is like you can't build capacity. I mean we can't conclude capacity building within a short period of a TOR right six months one year capacity building complete on DHS to in country X. Right, it's it's that it's a kind of a long term process and you have to work very closely with the countries and probably get all the local people involved, because like they only know what really works in the country right somebody from say from another continent can't just travel to a country and build capacity without getting local people really engaged and empowered. So, how, so we all understand it's very important to build capacity when it comes to sustainability of a digital public good. And what is our approach. So we call it the his method of capacity building. So it again is something very broad which I have kind of tried to summarize in few bullet points identify some important elements. The first thing is about strengthening national information systems for governance right it's not about strengthening DHS to capacity right it's we are talking always about something broader because for DHS to to exist. We need to have something broader something more foundational in place, otherwise we can't really have DHS to capacity building. So we have a lot of artists work very closely collaborate with the ministries. So that's the main task the regional his groups which I mentioned in the previous slide is doing. And we really strongly believe in the Scandinavian tradition of participatory design. So with the stakeholders with the people with the people at the grassroot level, so that we are kind of sensitive to what their requirements are rather than we go to country X, and say like this is DHS to we have learnings from 50 countries we know what you need you are having something very special that is only existing in your country so please listen to us and do what we want though that's not kind of the approach, even though that is kind of very easy that's why sometimes implementing DHS to should be taking, I mean, quite long right so for I will take my own example from Sri Lanka, like we have been trying to implement DHS to in a new domain called education, you miss you will hear more about it tomorrow. So there we are really focusing on building capacity, we are taking baby steps, because we, I mean we, we are kind of a, we have a very good, I mean, a successful implementation of DHS to in health. But we did we were a bit too humble and we were kind of being very receptive to the concerns of the education ministry and kind of trying to build capacity in their core team when implementing DHS to even in a country which already has some amount of I mean significant amount of capacity or existing. And we work with the core teams in the countries, these are not like DHS to core teams or his core teams, this is about like ministry teams, mostly, and engaging the usually as I mentioned before, the engagement is long term, it's not really like, for example, it's not like we have a current contract with the demolition ministry and if only when we have a contract we have to help know it should not be like that. So, all these DPGs which are kind of trying to implement their own solution in the countries have to work very closely with the, with the ministries of the countries and should not be fully driven by financial gains right so that's how the country will be able to sustain their own resources if the country doesn't have capacity and they only have a TOR of like six months or one year, you should not leave them afterwards you have to be there with them for them to build the capacity and the research. Right, so, this is an interesting area like some of us, at least the practitioners or the implementers will feel research is something very abstract and it always goes above us. What academics are doing right by the universities. True enough, we are very closely affiliated to the university here, as well as all the local universities that his network is closely working with. But the thing is, what we are always believing is is the action research. So our approach has been that building knowledge on implementing information systems while building systems on the ground through partnership. So we work with partnership with different stakeholders, and we kind of emphasize on building something that works on the ground. So based on that, if you talk about the University of Oslo it has produced more than 75 PhDs, I think as of now, and then we have 30 plus active PhD students, including myself. We have a master's program here as well as few other countries that we have a partnership with such as South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and the country I come from Sri Lanka. And of course, there are like the other thing is like all this, like it's not like UIO has a lifelong partnership and support or like the country in a global south will be getting forever funding to take to continue their master's program. If I take the example in Sri Lanka, the master's program was set up in year 2009 from the normal grant, which is only there for three years. But the country is sustaining that master's program up to date with the co funding of the government right so that's kind of the country ownership and country taking it forward. Of course, the resource persons are coming from here and the network, but the thing is like it has to be something more long term for it to be sustainable. Right. So, here we talk about action research which could be a technical term, but like how is it related to all the different implementations we are having. So we do research here. And based on this research, they kind of feeding to country implementation, like this research that we do will tell us how best we should be approaching the countries and how best we should be implementing the DHS to software in the country, not only that. From a platform perspective, like we will get to know like what really works. Should it be that University of Oslo should be making all the different software components like the entire core plus all the extensions should be made by University of Oslo. And that's it. Right. Is that so not really like the learnings have been that there would be many extensions I think we will hear more about this about the design lab and many more in coming days. The thing is like we learn how to design the platform, as well as how to build capacity. So that's kind of one cycle, which is kind of like the research transmitting into our implementations. But the other side of it is that like from all these implementations we know what really works. So that I mean based on implementations we keep on doing more and more research. Right. So that's why that's how it is related. Unfortunately, you are not able to see the first line in that short phrase that you have there. So it was about, I mean, DHS to has been kind of big across the world. So much so that a couple of years back I think there was this report and like, there was a feeling whether DHS to should be a independent entity because it is so much of a product that's been implemented globally. I think what it what came out of this evaluation report by norad in 2016 was that his and the DHS to should remain within the UIO, mainly because all this implementation support capacity building and research is kind of critical for the development and evaluate and evolving of DHS to moving forward. So that's why the DHS to platform stays within the University of Oslo and the his center. And all this research, of course, is transmitted disseminated. I mean it doesn't have to be only within the academia so it's not only this academic publications. It's more about innovations implementations and having all of education modalities implemented. As a DPG for people to know what the DPG is about and for them to implement by themselves without really having the core team of the order DPG producers, trying to go and travel to the country and implement. We really need a good documentation and sharing the knowledge. So when it comes to DHS to what are the modalities we have adopted. So we of course have a extensive documentation which is, which has been evolving for more than a decade now, which is available there. But like this documentation is not only for the developers, right so it's it's more inclusive where you have the technical content, which is relevant for the developers, as well as implementation principles, which like in case if you don't have a his group in the country and if you have a couple of champions in the country who want to learn DHS to they can follow these guides. I mean, these are very lengthy documents, but we don't only have this very big hundred page documents. We have a lot of videos, which are available in YouTube. One good thing that came out of pandemic amongst many others was that we were really able to conduct all our, I will be talking about it a bit later, academies online, and all these are recorded and so many other recordings are there. And everything is available on YouTube. I mean, it's not just for beginners, trust me, even I myself keep going back visiting these YouTube videos just before me conducting some training programs because like we can't remember everything right DHS is so big. So it's, I'm really glad that everything is there online, especially the YouTube videos. So all these are really important, and you need to kind of keep evolving as a DPG you can just have. I mean, because it says your documentation you can just stick to a text document because it's documentation. And it's also kind of important that you have this materials which are reproducible, because if we have a set of material which only we or like an expert can implement interpret when he wants to do and do a training. It's also useful. Just imagine you have a country, which can't afford experts to come and travel travel all the way there and implement, they should be able to read these documents and implement the training program. So that's the kind of strategy that we have been trying to follow and of course we respect the diversity of the countries and the cultures. So that's why we have the training material in multiple languages it's quite important. So if you want to become global, that you have to serve all these contextual, you have to understand and respect all these differences in the regions and our academies. So these academies of course is something very popular and we are increasingly seeing many other DPG is following this trend which is which is really cool, because this we believe like all of us have attended academies as learners, and we are now contributing as trainers. So this is kind of like, I will also explain it in a bit more detail so we have different levels of academies, as we call it, we have a foundational one, which is more self paced, which anyone can follow. And once you do that, we have the level one, which is like. I mean, a little bit more advanced, but mostly conducted by the regional HIST, and these are kind of, it could be on site or online, they are held in different regions like Africa and Asia. And the standardized material of course is produced by the UIO, and then we have level two which is a little bit advanced, and then we have internal trainings for the low for the within the his network so that we can kind of continue our capacity development. But the interesting thing is, like, the more you try to disseminate things. I mean, they can be slightly unstructured, right. And this is where like the governance of entire thing also is a bit critical. So that's why we have a separate training team in University of Oslo, who kind of give provide guidance and documents so that all these training programs that are conducted everywhere in the globe are pretty standard. Otherwise, like, because like I might interpret DHS to and their tools in my own way, and somebody else might do it, some other thing. So this kind of can lead to fragmentation and really bad use experience. So we are a bit concerned about that. That's why we have that governance perspective also address. And now I'm coming to something a little bit techie about about the software and the platform. Right, so why is software important for sustainability of a DPG. The thing is now, especially when it comes to DHS to which has been there for decades, right so DHS to of course can just like be what it is. I mean, because there are so many countries adopting in, but it doesn't mean like after five years if DHS who tries to remain the same that all these hundred countries will be using it. Right. So that's why you have to be relevant to the requirement on the ground. So we DHS to really respects that. So with the changing requirements as well as changing context and the technology, you have to keep evolving. And we have to maintain kind of a governance where open source community can contribute as well as you will maintain some level of co-governance so that platform remains solid while incorporating all these different extensions. And of course we have to be interoperable with the broad ecosystem. So what is DHS to. So we have the core software and the extensions. I think you'll be hearing more about this from few other experts will be talking about the DHS to platform and the extensions apps and things. So I'm not going to do too much detail. So we have all these different components in the DHS to core platform and top of that, we have different extensions that we build so that we can really serve the requirements in local context. Another cool thing that we have to ensure that we, we are relevant to the requirements on the ground is to have this feature prioritization. So what we actually do is like, so just imagine how does DHS to know what to incorporate in the say version number 2.41. How do they know that? How does the core team knows. So there are a couple of mechanisms like one thing is like we kind of take note of all the requests that are coming from community of practice. And then we have internal his regional feature prioritization mechanism. We have a JIRA to request and to report bugs. And then we have reports as well as implementation finding. So what you see on to your right is like the internal feature prioritization. I mean, and extract from that. We are like, in the his we have his space, your hub, we have and three other two other hubs in Africa and Latin America and we have the So all of us like we keep kind of bidding, right? We want this feature for the next version. We want that. So with that we have a kind of internal voting mechanism. And that's how we are kind of prioritizing within the network. Right. But like, I'm not saying that's the only source. Of course we have some other mechanisms, but like that was we keep kind of sensitive to the changing requirements and be relevant. So it's not just the core. It's more about local innovation. And of course to maintain this balance is the kind of governance that we always require like we can be very generic when it comes to the platform. But what you are seeing here is again a local innovation from Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 pandemic where we identified contact mapping is really crucial and it kind of became extension or the web app in the core platform or in the app hub. And we have this DHS to app hub where all these different apps where the HIST and the UI has produced this make made available. So it's always about balancing what should be in the core and what could be what I mean. I mean, but for everything else you have to kind of have apps and things like that where things can become more. I mean, can really support the local innovations. And of course we have this different methodologies like design lab, which kind of deep dive into this entire design process like what should be there in the core. What should be there as local innovations and how to promote local innovations, how to make everything easy. And then finally to make everything easy for the developers we have total different I mean like entire like set of tools available and all these are made available on DHS to website so whoever who wants to contribute can really support. But having said that, I also heard one comment about funding and I was, I was even wondering, Christine, what do you think like, isn't it the funding which is most crucial for a sustainability of a DPG or what do you think about that. So this is handing over, you know, so I would, I would claim it's not the most important thing, because you need to prove the concept, because we have never had 10 years of funding. We only have half a year at the time. So you need to prove the concept every single day. This is not, this is doesn't come easy. And we started in 1994. So it took us many, many years, it took six years only working in South Africa to make that system scale in order to understand how to scale in the country. And that was traveling then very fast to Mozambique and to the Asia and to the rest of Africa. So I think funding, it is part of it. It's super important, and you need to work on it. And it's not, it cannot come first. It has to come as a grassroots engagement. And then you put the concept where there is good enough to fund or not, because I really believe that because if you throw money after things, it destroyed everything. Sometimes when I'm in the panel next slide, sometimes when I'm in the panel of public private partnership I said, you don't need if it too much money is dangerous, because then people are in it for the wrong reasons. So we all, we are in it for the good reasons. So I would say, whatever we have heard about. What we're talking about now is value based community. We are all sharing the same values. And the fantastic part is that that also goes for our investor group. So how are we able to seduce or to find those good investors. It's because of the good work happening in the countries. So the proof of the pudding is happening in the countries and because it's happening in the countries. That's why we have been able to find the best partners, investors, there is. I think it's interesting because if you look at this slide, this slide was once upon a time made to see the correlation between money and number of countries. The US dollars we're talking about, you can see the flat line there, where we were surviving on research funds and an exploitation of master students PhD students professors and associate professors that kept the whole shabang going for so many years. Then, Global Fund PEPFAR, still discussing who was actually planning the trip first, came to visit NORAD and us in 2012, 8th of December, actually, in fact, because they arrived in my house on the Christmas Party, where we had possible 20 PhD students from Africa and Asia present in that party. And the day after we had a meeting where we had a round and everybody was saying okay I have my upgrade next week, I will defend my thesis in March. And they were, what is going on here? What is community is this? And we believed you were super popular at that time, but that was 12, scaled on there, 10, 8 countries on the Asian, a lot of Asian states. And then of course on the plans, in Global Fund, very many countries had it on the plan. So they came to us and we had a meeting in Oslo, Geneva, and Washington, and it ended up with a handshake agreement that all three party investment group for strengthening health information systems in countries was a handshake, no documents, $1 million each per year to solve this. Because we need, because all the money was going to the countries, and activities in the countries. How could we make a sustainable platform that can support these countries 24-7 if there were no core? So we then started with this discussion advocacy for investing in the core, not only in the countries. So we got, well, we have to tell that Nora has always been in the forefront. Thank you, Nora. Already in 2010, we got Nora issued an assessment saying you need to support the core. Because so many countries, okay, not that many countries to be honest, but still, in the scale in the world, it seems to be very many. Then you got 4 million crowner, and you know what that is? $300,000. And we hired Lars, Ola, Martin. So Lars is the tech lead for the last, since then, since 10, 13 years, Ola's implementation boss, Martin is the back end, and Jan is the analytics, they're still here. Lars is moving on a bit, still keeping up. So these four made a big difference. Oops, jump. And then these millions from the three investors, you can see here exploding. And then we did something smart. Lars did a prototype of how tech farm could monitor all their investment in HIV in all the 58 countries with all the implementing partners with DSS too. There's been millions of dollars on a system that didn't work. And they said, okay, if you make this work, we are super happy that the rest of the 70 countries can use that platform to support, strengthen their own health information system. That happened. So in, in May 2015, we went global with all the 58 countries for pepper. Well, you know, pretty cheap for for pepper in a way, but that was the one, the way that acknowledged that the core need to be invested in in order to be solid to be sustainable to be trusted to have a 24 seven uptime that we need to have a big software group. So this of course, you know, for pet far to secure the funds when Trump were elected. They needed to get the Gavi into to safeguard their investments. That's how you kind of making an investor group that actually we didn't do anything. We were just sitting there. The rest of the guys and girls were picking were getting others to safeguard investment to support the strengthening in the countries like like the Gavi was sitting here already from 14 sitting in all the meetings, but we had to wait for them to come in order to release that kind of initiatives and Gavi is now one of the third. They don't like us to say but to be to be honest, super important. And during the pandemic. All these trust built with these partners, they were able to mobilize money during the pandemic so we just could say to our at that time 17 years groups. Bang on just support the countries don't think about the money. Think about support the country do whatever you can, and we will be able to pay the bill. So I think, yes, it's important, but it's super important was going on in the countries because if because they will never come to us if it wasn't in the plan. It's totally demand driven. We have never gone and sell ourselves to any country, because there's so many countries out in the world. So they're coming please help us. Oh, it's on the plans. Somebody need to fund it. So I really think that it is a hen and the chicken thing that egg and the chicken, but it is of course super important and we have to work hard from an informatics point of view to tell people it's not an auto box is not plug and play. It's hard work, and we need to do support the all the local innovation need to be in the countries for us to be able to understand all the use cases. That was also something that happened during the pandemic, and I won't stop now but because we will discuss it more on Thursday, when we discuss them, they're looking back and go for the future. Turning the dishes to platform even more into an innovative platform for innovation in the finishes, I, I will say during the pandemic really saw that the innovations in the countries where the most most important and created hope for all the other countries to be able to borrow, steal, domesticate those innovation to support the stop it here. Up to, of course, please, please not coming because otherwise you will not know time to travel. So we are keeping the questions for the family. Okay. Over the break. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. My audible. Okay. Great. So hi everyone, but I think I guess it's a tour session post lunch must be heavy but thank you so much for being here. I think it's a full house so clearly speaks a lot about the session content that we're sharing here. So first off, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Aishani. I'm from Apti Institute. So we're a Bangalore based India organization. We're a tech public policy organization working on the intersection of tech and society. So a lot of times we get asked whether we have, you know, whether we're the tech experts and that's when we say that we're not really experts in tech but we're experts in understanding the impact of tech on people on community. And, you know, we come from a space from the social science space where we try to understand concepts such as risks and harms and how it really impacts citizens. And we look at questions of governance and data privacy. So that's broadly what we do at Apti, but today at the DHIs to confidence we find a place because we are currently now focusing on understanding digital public goods and I think live as well as for more they've done a great job in just setting up context of, you know, what digital but where we come from, we are currently focusing on a very specific piece of research, which is on communities. So when I talk about communities and I think this is something that was covered in his part of the organization, part of the presentation was building communities around DPGs and how that kind of enable sustainability of DPGs in the long run. So at Apti we're planning on building a playbook, which describes or puts forth a roadmap of how DPGs can go about building communities. Now, given that communities of DHIs to has done a fantastic job in building the community, but back home, a lot of the DPGs in India do not have this context. So at Apti we have been working on digital public goods at multiple levels we've been looking at it from the context of diversity. Okay, diversity, access and inclusion. So there's one part of our work which we do, which we have, we have been working with MOSIP and we're trying to look at, you know, enabling access and inclusion in the rollout of MOSIP, helping them roll it out as and when they think about these more important questions related to diversity and accessing like targeting marginalized communities. And that's our little bit, just a very brief work that we do with MOSIP. Apart from that we're working on this piece related to communities. And this project is being funded by ONI. On a parallel project we're looking broadly at digital public infrastructure and what the institutional capacity for that looks like. So for us capacity means two things, tech and institutional. Tech is not where we come from and it's not the expertise that we have, but where we do have expertise is building the institutional capacity, right? And that's another piece of project that we're working on. But today specifically, I think, you know, most of us coming from like the non-tech space we and in this room, like mostly I was in a room yesterday and it was filled with all the tech people. And I was asked this question of, you know, why is it that we find a space in specifically in the DHIS2 conference? And that brings me to answer it simply speaking, DHIS2 has acted in terms of how you go about building a community, right? And this community is not only comprising of people from the tech side, but as well as from the non-tech side having a robust set of non-practitioners, the implementationers and all of these people coming together which is very active, which is vibrant and that then contributing to the sustainability of DHIS2 as a platform, right? So we want to be able to highlight and understand what exactly has DHIS2 done right when they went about building the community. So understanding that journey for us has become very critical. So where we come from, we have identified four stages and I think this is something that Liv also mentioned in her discussion, which is you create the DPG, you deploy it and then there's evolution and then there's sustainance, right? So there are four stages to it. Now in the last two stages is where we see usually DPGs finding it a bit hard to grapple or that's the problem that they usually grapple with. And that is where we see that communities can play a very important role in the evolution and the sustainance, right? So I think that's the key point or that's the void in literature that we want to be able to fill. Just like an experience and why this confidence is going to be very helpful to our study is my colleague and I, Savjanya, yesterday we had a tour of the use case bazaar and I think just being a part of that use case bazaar gave us a very good insight of how the community is in action, right? So we met a lot of people, we were able to identify the various touch points, the various stakeholders and also to speak of it, how diversity both in terms of culture as well as your professional backgrounds. It's not just, you know, diversity only in terms of tech versus non-tech but also just seeing people come from so many places and being able to apply it in context specific situations, responding to the local needs gave us an overall idea of how this community is actually sustaining the platform and one of the major reasons of why it's surviving today, right? So we've had prior conversations with folks at DHIS too previously but those were like online conversations and, you know, it was just one hour calls wherein we tried to understand what the journey of community building has looked like for DHIS too and they were very insightful but being a part of this conference has taken it to another level wherein we're getting on-ground insight of how the community actually communicates, you know, something as simple as that which we probably wouldn't have if we were just online back in India. Now the primary reason why we want to be able to do this or like what is it that we seek to gain from all the learnings that we kind of take back home, what is it that we're going to do with it, right? Back in India we are working with two organizations, EGARV Foundation and Bekin. Both of these I would call them a DPG creator of themselves. So Bekin is working on decentralising networks and they're specifically working on mobility and in mobility they've been very good, they've been successful at building an app, it's called Namayatri and it kind of connects driver partners as well as consumers and that is one part of the work that they do and now they're looking to expand. Similarly we have EGARV Foundation who are also working with very closely and they are a citizen-centric delivery platform and they try to, you know, correct the market failures that occur between access to services by citizens, right? Now these organisations are very similar to, you know, what DHIS2 has been doing but there's a very big difference. So DHIS2 has interacted for themselves in terms of, you know, building the community around them, they are a more mature DPG. However EGARV and Bekin, though EGARV especially has been in the space for the past 20 years, they haven't taken the approach of surviving through the community mechanism, right? So we see EGARV and Bekin are thinking about questions related to community now and that is why we want to be able to understand how exactly communities are built because we think that community is a way of answering or could be the answer for organisations like or DPGs like Bekin and EGARV back home when now they're thinking of the next step, right? So they are thinking about scalability, inclusivity and questions of global adoption and that's where they see that there's a certain gap and that is where the community can really step up and help them in achieving their next goals. So we are working very closely with these organisations. What we want to do is gather all the knowledge that we can and the research of course that's been happening at the back end to be able to build out a roadmap which very, you know, which very simply puts across what communities, how communities are built, right? So you could see that this is broadly the two part structure. The first part is of our research is the learn framework and then the second part is the engage framework. The learn framework is why we're here today, part of the DHIs to conference understanding how mature DPGs have built communities. And the second part of the framework is where we, you know, are working very closely with Bekin and EGARV to draw an outline of how we go about how we could help them in building the communities, taking some very actionable pathways, putting it into action and like helping them in specific areas where they think they require help in thinking about building communities, right? Now broadly what the outcomes of the project are is a, I think I've reiterated many times is how do you build communities but also how communities can be viewed as actions and as agents of diversity and inclusion. And at the same time how the governance and culture of communities can enable long term sustainability of the DPG. And this is where the research is currently at. This is a quick snapshot of the research methodology that we adopted but I will not deep dive into it. We're currently in the phase where we're, you know, conducting surveys, participating in workshops, attending conferences, gaining more knowledge. This is a snapshot of the two organizations that I mentioned EGARV and Bekin and broadly outline their goals, their needs. Now in all what we want to be able to do is that we do agree that every DPG has its own way of going about building a community. Their needs are different, their goals are different, governance is different, their stakeholders are different. Also the sectors that they're catering to is very different, right? So we do acknowledge that there is a certain uniqueness to go about building a community. But what we want to be able to do is get that least common denominator or the common thread of, you know, what could be abstracted from all of their journeys and then go about building a roadmap which can help DPGs answer the question of, okay, if I want to build a community, where do I even start, right? You have the technical expertise, you have so many people working with you but you really don't know how to divert your manpower into what areas with stakeholders do we even think about like, you know, do we target students, do we target like academic institutions, do we go to like ministries? So we see that and these are like questions that we have got by speaking to EGov and Bekin and other DPGs in India. And these are some of the questions that they are grappling with. So this is a very quick snapshot of what the playbook looks like. But I would like to end there. And this is just a very brief snapshot of what we have been doing, what we want to do at the conference, what we want to gain from the conference. But what we are doing is a one and a half hour session tomorrow, there's a workshop, and it's an interactive workshop where we would not be spending more than 10 minutes on explaining what we are doing. But majority of the time about 70 minutes slotted just for discussions and activities, where we want to be able to take inputs from people like the people in the room today, where you all could give us an insight of what the journey of the community has been for you. And what are the challenges and the barriers and in general understanding, you know, where are the gaps that occur, what are the values of the community and how do you go about building the community, both in terms of processes, as well as reaching out to the right persons who could then help take your DPG to the next level. Right. That's it. And I would end there. Time for for panel. But then, so can I call upon the Ministry of Health from Sri Lanka, Ministry of Health from Timor-Lest, Eric Feiring from NORAD, you will be the first and then, which of you sitting in the panel, we'll be using this one. So please sit. And then, of course, the one that has spent much time talking can also be there, but a little bit more in the background, Pamud, you can sit also. So we just jump ahead because time is flying and I have NORAD at my first site here. So, so we heard a lot from Li Marte explaining the how it all started and the global digital global good alliance, but could you, Eric, talk a bit, why is NORAD interested in DPGs? From where is that coming? Okay, we have one each. First, I must say, thank you to all of the presenters. I've learned so much just being here. So thank you so much for that. No, I think digital public goods, as Liv said, I think key point is sovereignty. I think we saw that, I mean, we see that this in Norway as well, but we saw that lots of countries are either locked in, in proprietary solutions with vendor lock ins, or have to, I would say, submit some of their digital sovereignty to other countries in order to be able to use their solutions. So what we wanted to do was to come up with like a third option, something that was not locked in to proprietary solutions, and we did not have to link yourself too closely to another country unless you wanted to. And just to take something, a code, a solution, and adapt it to your own needs and have full digital sovereignty, either locally or nationally. That's, I think is a key motivation. Then there's also an efficiency point of view, because looking at countries, digital public goods are solutions that because of how they are designed, they scale really well, which is good for countries and others implementing these solutions. And I think also for us as a donor, we saw that we, I mean, we have been funding project, one project at a time in one setting at one time, and then if you want to do the same thing because it's really successful, we have to do everything over again. It's not very cost effective. But if you design in scalability from the very start, we should do with digital public goods. It's also a way for us to invest our relatively small money in a way that is cost efficient and just scales well. So I think for us, those are the two key motivations. And that is why Norway was one of the co funders, co founders of the digital public goods Alliance, and why we are now co host Nora this co hosting the secretary of the dbj. I need to add for for information and you could have a comment on that one as well. Nora has actually invested. We could hear the interest of the capacity invested in 10 scholarships building capacity on digital public infrastructure in countries in the his group so we have already recruited nine of them and two of them in in the room. So, so one reflection from that investing in. Well, no, I think, generally, I think we, we don't know enough about what truly makes a DPG sustainable. I mean, it seems up the is on a really good journey to enlighten us. Also, we know there is a lot to learn from the DHS to experience but still, we don't really know and I must also say, even if we see how you've done it with DHS to it took decades. So what we need to look at is how can we replicate some of those things in a much shorter time. So we might need to look at new solutions to replicate that. And of course, our collaboration with you is part of bringing new knowledge to this field, finding out how can the DHS to experience be applied elsewhere, and also what can you learn from what is being done at a record pace in other parts of the world right now on DPGs. Thank you. Can you pass on to the next so Sri Lanka you are very well known to to invest for many years into DHS to first maybe but then later also many other DPGs. How are you being able to any reflections on sustainability on more than one DPG. You have experienced with dialogue you are now heading into the most safe so any reflection on how you plan to sustain several of the pictures. Thank you very much. It's a very interesting question and challenging question. Now, I suppose you know the story about the DHS to in Sri Lanka, I think it's been from 2010 11 we have been doing a lot of work with the DHS to then around 2018 we were with the global fund we were embarking on a new journey like developing a digital health architecture blueprint for Sri Lanka. So now the project started that time, but we have just completed this whole process with that a lot of learning came and a lot of insight came to the sustainability of this application sites. That's why actually we selected even within the blueprint we identified as a principal open source open standard and getting those things into the policies policy level is that whatever we said and done at the country level the administrators should buy in for these things otherwise they will spend money on other propriety things even though these are globally accepted but it has to be going to the now at the ministry of health level. They basically accepted these principles from the director general to other people. So we are working on this open MRS. There's one project in hospital health information system open SRP. We are working with the WDF project and then mostly ICDA is working on this. So likewise there are many things we are and at the same time we are looking at the capacity building of this open digital public goods, especially working with the politics community, this post graduate institute board of studies. So we are embedded in certain component of this DHS to another open source things into the MSC and MD curricula as a part of this because otherwise even with the DHS to you know about 10 years we are working with but still we find difficult sometimes to sustain certain things, especially in scaling up the systems because there are about 67 DHS to base systems. So we need to build in those things into the curriculas of the post graduate institute. Sri Lanka has been very successful of actually having the public infrastructure as part of the curriculum in even the medical studies. So that's kind of a very, very interesting approach from Sri Lanka that you are pretty maybe the first. So any other challenges you see with sustaining? Now we are just thinking about this software application as one part but there are if you take the whole ecosystem in WTO ITU, building blocks, there are seven components of this infrastructure governance. There are different areas when we deploying this application. So we have to think about all these different areas also to ensure the sustainability, not only the software application. There is one thing and another thing is I really appreciate the if Sri Lanka what they are doing is a good collaboration with the Ministry of Health and other other partners. So we need to have some kind of a sustain that partnership as well. So for the for the long term. Thank you. Thank you. Can we go over to Timolest? You are a bit earlier in the process of deploying DPGs but I know you have experience with the DHS too and we also heard you have problems with integrating with the other systems that you are using. So what kind of challenges are you seeing sustaining DPG in Timolest? Thank you very much. This is very interesting question. So as our experience this is like Sri Lanka Ministry of Health but we are like behind of that if you want to compare. So we just start the DHS in 2014 for the preparation but up to now we have faced a lot of challenges because many things as I mentioned by our friend from Sri Lanka, Ministry of Sri Lanka, that there is not only the software but the infrastructure, the capacity building, the human resource and then funding also and then the transfer knowledge of the advisor to the local health staff, specifically for the technical and then it's like too many things there and then we also see from the government part like management and then technical. For the management, the people agree and then receive very well that this software and then we will have a commitment to implement even though still face the challenge. But for the technical it's not get ready, I'm not saying that not get ready but like it's still facing a lot of the technical things because of the we have the advisor but we are the change every time. This is the one. The second one is like up to now we not as administrator for this DHS in quality LHS. This is the second. The third one, if you would like, now we are in progress to update the all day many indicators based on the global SDH and then national indicator, but the software is not updated. We still use 2.26. And then if someone's coming to give the training, they have to use different version, it's become the challenge also because what you will learn from the training is different with the actual situation. So we face a lot of the things for the technical. Maybe, like, when the people scan to help us need to gradually she one by one what the site is especially in the technical things and then we will receive for the other infrastructure and then finance. Thank you. Any comments from your side since he's trying guys the one supporting to molest. So that's that's that's a very interesting question so now it's it's quite interesting like you can see the kind of can do even comparison right so we have Sri Lanka and we have the molester. There is again like no secret recipe like if you are doing something really wonderful really fast in one country that we go and support another country, the things work the same right it's very contextual as I was trying to frame. As I mentioned like the software and the team supporting is just one element, but like we are kind of trying to do it's it's part of the digital transformation, as we would call it in the academy right so we have to do the entire there has to be kind of a transformational process while we try to implement the DPG like DHS to. So, as Mananathalia mentioned like if the infrastructure and like if you don't have a proper capacity building mechanism which is already in place in the country, and then like the human resources is not properly they are in the ministry, it's it's very different when we try to implement like, for example in Sri Lanka, like human resources is not like comparatively again is not a major problem like you have like trained resources like you have very good ones but it's it's a more infrastructure of distribution and things like that, whereas in in in Timor-Leste, like, I mean it's a whole different scenario infrastructure is the same, right, even the government funding. It's again the same so it's more about like it's a very good question. So it's like, like, so even if you keep the same variable like the same regional his group which is supporting multiple countries, if the country context is different. So it can be the pace at which we are kind of doing that transformation can be really different. I will stop there I think there's need to come in here. So one question to after I'm so sorry we haven't really introduced people with names so we need to do another round with the name so please introduce yourself first. Yeah, but I just have one question for you. And maybe it's a strong input, but I could, I can hear from the global public digital good Alliance and others actors, maybe not up to but you can, you can, you can comment on it. I think countries to deploy many deputies and many here about this capacity building challenges. How come that is kind of the rhetorics that you shall have many deputies I'm just what what are your experiences when you give us. Yeah. Hi, I am so Johnny and I hope everybody can hear me all right. I work without the Michael you just had my colleague speak so to just jump right into what a Christian Christian just asked right. How do you promote the adoption of DPG is while also contending with questions of capacity whether it's at the country level or at broader global regional level right and this is something we've been working on at up the as a research institute for a while we see that promoting DPG DPG's should go hand in hand with the creation of certain safeguards in the country context. It's not possible and and this is often a bitter pill to swallow which is that you can't rule out digital public goods or digital public infrastructure where you don't have whether existing infrastructure to support such innovation right. The reason why, in India, for instance, we were able to have fast payment systems through our phone is by 2016 when this rule out happened. We had a vast majority of the population population over 60% with smartphones and now in 2023 we have about 90% with smartphones, we're able to integrate and identify so many people for welfare schemes because our digital ID has been adopted again enjoys about 93% adoption, but to be able to innovate we had a combination of factors came together at the heart of which is often political will right and and you need political will not just in the highest, you know, corridors of power in your governments but you also need political will and capacity to be built at the level of districts and at the level of smaller towns. And in the case of India what worked is that we tried to, and this is something up the has done research about which is, they tried to empower existing officials to become agents for the roll out of digital public goods. For instance, when we had covered and vaccine distribution was a question that India was grappling with what they decided to do at the level of villages was to call on local health workers to become the agents who help large village level populations, sign up on tech platforms to access vaccines. So we don't see digital public goods as a replacement for existing welfare schemes or existing modes of welfare delivery as some but as something that will help augment existing systems right having said that. One thing is important to note is that in the Indian experience. We had some technical capacity within our country in trying to build this we had some political appetite whether it's from the highest corridors of power in the government, or at the level of local administrators. And there was also some knowledge that was created from our experience of rolling out fast payment systems called UPI and our digital ID system that we are now trying to use to build more systems where so we're doing our own health and digital public infrastructure it's called the National Digital Health Mission, we're trying to do it in the space of e commerce and so on, but in trying to do so it, it's also become imminent that we can't be a walled garden in our experience and we need to be able to document and discuss the story of building DPI and DPG is mostly because capacity is only a small part of it it's also we've realized knowledge sharing and documentation is just as important. And that's what we're trying to do now as a part of India's G20 presidency and I mean, I will stop here but these doing a playbook on digital public infrastructure which will be published sometime in August and yeah we'd be happy to share that as well. Thank you. So maybe we could have a, you know, you know, presentation on yourself the names, since I forgot it was to be on the slide in the fair. And then maybe people, we can have time for a couple of questions. Okay, my name is Mariana Palle, I'm head of the policy planning and many department. I'm the Minister of Health. I'm Dr. Pallita Karnapema, Director of Health Information Minister of Education. I think I was partly introduced, but my name is Eric Feiring. So I'm Assistant Director in NORAD Norwegian Agency for Development Corporation, where I lead our work on innovation, technology and digitalization. The only partly I only use the first name, you know. Can we have time? Can I add a little bit? I think it was a question that came up earlier about how we think as funders because I think many of the other points around how you create sustainable DPG has been well covered and others in the panel can cover those better. But I think, especially on the funding part and what you said, Kisten, is quite interesting. I think we have seen that we're trying to constantly understand and evaluate our place in the ecosystem and how we can add most value. We're not a very big donor. We might be punching above our weight on this particular topic, but Norway is not that big. So I think what we found is we can actually provide that core support, because we don't have the country presence that some other big bilateral donors have. But we have quite a risk appetite in the sense that we can put our weight behind something that is not yet well proven. I think we came in relatively early with the HS2. Yeah, so 20 years later, but still. I think with MoSIP we came in after Gates Foundation and OMDR and a few other quite visionary philanthropists have worked with them for a few years, but as the first bilateral. So that I think that's, and now with OpenCRUS, which is a small, which is a civil rights and vital statistics system that can interact quite well with MoSIP and some of the other parts of the foundational DPI stack that is being built. There we have come in very early as the first big institutional donor with a long term small investment for five years with them. I think we have that. I think that is the role we can play and seeing how the dynamics play out now. There is and should be almost exclusively South South collaboration on this in terms of sharing the technology sharing experiences. We think we as a North actor can have that flexible long term core funding, as well as working together in the political space and the normative space about creating awareness. Now that's where we see ourselves in the ecosystem. So just to clarify those points. Thanks. Hi, I'm Subtarshi Purkasta from Indiana University and Regents Institute. My question is a person appreciation of what you mentioned but having known the history of how Norhead, which is the capacity building initiative in education has supported. I think that is unique to Norhead in the sense that there are very few global institutions funders from countries who have supported programs in capacity building I think parallel to DPG so I think that's an appreciation. My question is, how do you see this wall garden approach that a lot of institutions take or countries in fact take. And how do you see, and this is also to up to in the sense. How do you think, because DHS to in a sense has many adopters who actually claim that DHS was theirs, right, which a lot of other DPG is doing so how do you encourage other organizations to have people build that together. And how does sort of a country which is already built a platform like the India stack, not make it India stack and only makes it a global stack. So really great question, I think. Well, I think what DHS to and his has done so well is to create this multi local community. It has several very strong localizations and I think that's something that should one should look at for other DPGs as well. The point is, Nora is supporting most it. We're not supporting other. So there is that arms length to the government of India, but it's still the Indian experience. It's Indian technology. It's, it's a force a powerful force, but it is one step removed in the government of India which I think is, is why this might be even more forceful because then that means it's, it's not hard power, it's soft power and knowledge exchange and learning and I think that's also why Norway and India can then be really strong partners in promoting this agenda going forward. Yeah, I'll leave it there and send it over to you. And then we have one more question. Please answer your question by pointy about how do you cease to make something just the India stack and make it a more globalized stack that in a way encapsulates all of India's G20 agenda at this year right the core of their presidency is to push for a DPI approach and and they partnered with UNDP to precisely do this build those knowledge base and resources that in some way encapsulate not just India's experience of building digital public infrastructure, but also borrow from experiences of countries like Brazil that has its own big system experience of Singapore with its pay now, and all of those and to see how, you know, have like even a global compendium of DPG and DPI and see how some countries have made progress and what are the best practices that have worked. So this is definitely a knowledge product that is can, you know, further the conversation in this space, and to specifically answer your question about India stack itself right and the brain behind this is Dr. Pramod Varma and he's recently been made the head of something called the Center for Digital Public Center for excellence in digital public infrastructure. Yeah something like that. Yeah, sorry. Yes, it's also housed in Bangalore. And part of his job at CDPI is to make India stack global and to see if there can be integrations happening and some of that is happening now India's fast gaming system can be used in Singapore as well. I'm not speaking to France to use it. So yeah, I'll stop there. One short question. Very short and starting. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And since you are a presenter, can I direct this question to you, Christine. Yeah. Hi. First of all, I want my name is Georgia don't go. I'm from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And I want to agree with you that funding is not everything you have been able to sustain this global good without even much funding. I saw Emmanuel mentioned this one word that is not brought clearly among the factors that has enabled you to sustain this program. That is collaboration. He mentioned it very small blood point with ministries of health, but at a higher level. I want to hear your comments about the collaborations that you have had with CDC, WHO, where the global public health specialist subject matter expertise from my position where I have seen that collaboration and engagement work before money flowing so I don't I don't see it as one of your major black points for sustaining this global good so your comments about So many bullet points and so many slides. I'm so sorry. Well, you know, to the CDC, because you mentioned also double show we can start there. Of course, double show has been extremely important for us. We have been collaborating with double show them for the last 12 years and we are a collaborative team that is strengthening health information systems in countries. And the word we have always had the comment into the double show. And we are actually, and I would say double show is using us as a dissemination platform for best practice and metadata packages in the context of collaboration with Gavi and global fund. So yes, very instrumental super important to be able to discuss with the people that have evidence research on what are the best indicator how can we try to adapt it to countries as informaticians we know that a database and indicates it can be designed very good and very bad. So we need to, to support the very good ones. And with the CDC we have had a very, very good collaboration with CDC or from the Ebola time. From that time we started to come to come to make the platform to become a disease surveillance platform and not only for routine public health monitoring. And then later we won actually normally we are so sourced in many to be honest. We won that collaborative agreement on from CDC, which has been extremely important for us with COVID-19 and beyond. That helped us a lot with the collaboration with the CDC helped us a lot during the pandemic and thanks to CDC, very much of the success we were able to support 60 countries during the pandemic so absolutely the collaboration with public health institutions, as well as the public health institution in Norway has been super important for us to have this into this personality approach to solving the social challenges within health. And later of course also in education and now in climate you know so the domain knowledge is super important for us. And that's our approach. So if that wasn't clear from the presentations. That was a misunderstanding. And when it comes to the funding is not so important I will be killed. Of course it's important. But it's not from, it's not all and it's not from the beginning. It shall be kind of evolving with your success. I think mobilizing as partners and I really think I believe that when you work in collaboration with partners you become better. And you have to have smart investors, not domain investors, if there are any many of them. Okay, but thank you so much. We are now running into a new session for cross sector monitoring of the progress actually STGs that will be happening in the auditorium run. But before that we need a coffee break and thank you so much for attending this. For the presenters. I think this has been a super cool, very good session and to be continued the discussion in the coffee brain. And coffee and Andrew you have to come here. Thank you for the question. Thank you. Without your permission. Okay.