Organisation unit are one of the key elements of a DHIS2 system, representing the administrative hierarchy of the health sector down to the health facilities at the lowest level (e.g. National - Regional - District - Health Facilities). Larger countries may have 10-30 000 organisation units in all, thus even though each organisation unit does not change frequently, managing them is a major tasks. Administration of organisation units is often decentralised to some extent, for example with one user acting as administrator per district. These district administrators often get limited training in DHIS2, and it would therefore be advantageous that the user interface for managing organisation units is simple and user friendly. That is not currently the case: today, different aspects of organisation unit management is done in different places within DHIS2:
- Management of basic properties such as name, address, contact information etc is done in the “Organisation unit” section of the Maintenance app.
- Adding/removing an organisation unit from organisation unit groups is done in the “Organisation unit group” section of the Maintenance app.
- Assignment of data sets to an organisation unit (i.e. what data entry forms should be filled for an organization unit) is done in the “Data set” section of the Maintenance app.
- Assignment of case-based programs to an organisation unit (i.e. what programmes for case-based reporting should be filled for an organization unit) is done in the “Program” section of the Maintenance app.
- Changing the geographical coordinates (moving a facility) is done in the GIS app. (Coordinates can also be added/edited as text fields in the “Organisation unit” section of the Maintenance app).
To streamline administration of organisation units, users would therefore like to have an app that integrates all of the above activities in one place:
- Editing basic properties of an organization unit.
- Selecting what organisation units groups the organisation unit should be member of.
- Selecting what data set and programmes should be assigned to the organisation unit.
- Placing the organisation unit on a map to specify its geographical coordinates (for facilities where the coordinates represent a point only, i.e. not polygons).
This should be possible both for existing organisation units, and when creating new ones.