OPEN Consortium has organised 7 VIRTUAL MANAGEMENT MEETINGS (almost every 2 months) with participation of all project members. This closely interaction has contributed to ensure ownership and adequate distribution of responsibilities of project executions across all project partners. It has become a crucial tool to ensure contextual adoption of contingency measures in order to overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In order to conduct management operations, OPEN Consortium has made use of periodic virtual management meetings, with a bi-monthly frequency, to discuss and approve contingency measures and operational step for project implementation. These virtual project management meetings have been instrumental to ensure smooth communication flow among all project members and understanding of responsibilities and obligations, considering the special difficulties posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the forced switch to exclusive online implementation. In order to ensure ownership and full-appropriation by Laotian partners of the contingency measures adopted to conduct the project exclusively online, OPEN consortium records the sessions to register operational agreements and elaborated coordinated ppt. presentations which summarized intervention by WPs, tasks and concrete activities, according to timelines, standards and allocation of responsibilities across the whole consortium.

Internal communication mechanism adopted by the OPEN consortium have been conditioned from the onset by the challenges to access Internet in Lao PDR and particularly by the lack of proper equipment by the IROs. However, on the account of D1.4.1. IT EQUIPMENT PURCHASE and its rapid execution, partners have been able to rely on this new infrastructure to ensure participation key personnel on all management actions. For remote interaction, partners rely on general available communication tools informed via email on weekly basis and punctual multilateral videoconferencing during the virtual management meetings.

The OPEN / “Opening Laos Higher Education System to internationalization strategies” project is a Key Action 2 of Erasmus +: Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices: Strengthening of capacities in education superior, co-financed by the European Commission. The general objective of the OPEN project aims at increasing the academic quality and research activities of universities in the PDR of Laos through the development of internationalisation in Lao PDR, working specifically with the International Relationships Office of the 5 public universities of the South-East Asian country. OPEN will be implemented over the next 2 years and it is expected to return to face-to-face actions as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic allows for international travel.