This community innovation has been accepted at the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference and will be included a session.
DHIS2 for Digital Sovereignty in Timor-Leste
Digital sovereignty in LMICs is achieved when a country can operate, adapt, govern, and finance its health information platform through local capacity, accountable governance, and sustainable financing. In Timor-Leste, a post-conflict setting with a history of institutional fragility, DHIS2 has been institutionalized as the Timor-Leste Health Information System (TLHIS) and has supported nationwide, integrated routine HMIS reporting of Ministry of Health (MoH) since its adoption in 2014, with a primary health care focus, covering all programmes including immunization, nutrition, RMNCH, surveillance, NCDs, communicable diseases, mental health, environmental health, and OPD. Data entry is managed at Community Health Centre level by dedicated HMIS officers, supported by municipal and national teams. Sovereignty has been enabled through sustained local capacity, MoH governance, and local and global stakeholder engagement, with technical partnership from WHO and HISP. Capacity building has been multimodal and continuous. A central cadre of HMIS system administrator was developed to manage DHIS2 aggregate customization (datasets, indicators, dashboards), expanding DHIS2 Tracker customization. The structured courses were aligned with hands-on practical sessions for troubleshooting, end-user support, and mentoring. National teams were coached to conduct subnational data entry and analysis training in local language with structured contents. Local IT infrastructure and capacity were strengthened through DHIS2 server administration training for national IT staff from data center, and national team, followed by in-country physical server installation and continued remote mentoring from experts. Sustainability has been reinforced by progressively shifting recurring operational costs and implementation activities into government budgeting, including cloud hosting costs and nationwide training costs.
Primary Author: Calistro Pacheco
Keywords:
DHIS2, digital sovereignty, local capacity building, Timor-Leste, digital public infrastructure, digital public goods, interoperability, open standards, data governance, train-the-trainer
2 Likes