 In this session, I will talk about the DHS2 core team. The DHS2 core team is the team that works on developing and maintaining the DHS2 systems in the country. The learning objectives for this session is to understand why a solid DHS2 core team is important to support implementations over time, what the key roles and responsibilities in a DHS2 core team are, and understand how the DHS2 core team can build capacity. Firstly, I will talk about what the core team is and why it is important. So in order to support the DHS2 implementation in a country over time, it's important to have a core team in the country. So technical assistance from DHS2 experts can often be helpful to support development and capacity building of this team, but the team should be based in the country. The country should aim to have their own team that can handle day-to-day development, troubleshooting and support as well as ensuring that policies and procedures are followed. We have what we call a DHS2 country team approach. So solid design and configuration of the system, it must be maintained over time as requirements change, and this requires the presence of in-country technical capacity, which is maintained over time to provide continuity. And we strongly suggest to establish a DHS2 core team in all countries implementing DHS2 to make sure that the country build up the necessary technical capacity to successfully coordinate, run and maintain DHS2 over time. So how do you form a core team? The core team should be based in the country. And importantly, the core team should be in a position to meet and collaborate with the Ministry of Health. So they need to build good working relationships with the Ministry. And members should preferably have some exposure and experience with DHS2 before starting. But as long as they have some basic IT skills and knowledge about health, the team can also learn the details of the DHS2 system. Ideally, the team is composed of an internal Ministry of Health staff would require DHS2 skills and experience. But sometimes in a transitioning period, it's quite common to have external DHS2 experts either seconded to the government or as part of virtual DHS2 core teams. But it should always be managed by the government, but people might be based outside the Ministry, for example, at local universities or within NGOs. The critical principle here is to ensure long term sustainability and stability of this work, making sure that roles and responsibilities in the team are clearly defined and that the work is funded long term. Later in this session, we will identify the positions that should be within the Ministry of Health. A problem often arising in DHS2 core teams is to keep staff over time. So staff leaving the Ministry's front job in the private sector or in the NGO sector is a challenge in many countries because DHS2 skills is very often in high demand. One way to address this and improve retention is by creating what we call stickiness, trying to find incentives that will make people stay over time. So building opportunities for personal growth, for example, is important. This can be participation at DHS2 academies, becoming a regional expert in a specialized field where you can share your experiences globally, academic scholarship such as master or PhD programs or other performance based initiative. Next, we will discuss the roles, the profiles and the tasks that are necessary to have in a DHS2 team. So the key roles in a core DHS2 team are a DHS2 operational lead. This is a manager of sorts that keep the day to day running of the team going. They can serve as project manager and deal with stakeholders. You also need DHS2 implementers. These are people that can do actual configuration and maintenance of the system itself. You need training and support staff. These are people who are competent and able to both plan and conduct training of other IT staff in the ministry, other colleagues and also of end users, so health personnel using DHS2. They should also be able to support end users to solve small and big problems that might arise. It's also useful to have system administrator or server administrators, security managers that can work on overseeing policies, tools and routines regarding security and also app developers if you are developing external apps. Some of these roles are depending on implementation. So the key roles to really have in the DHS2 core team is the operational lead, implementers, training and support staff and the server administrators. It's important to note here that one person can cover multiple roles, so you don't necessarily need one person for each role, but they need to have designated responsibilities. The size of the core team depends on the scale and the complexity of the implementation itself. So an indication can be that you would need at least three dedicated people as a minimum for any national implementation. It's important to note that the people working on the core team should have this as their dedicated job. We must be able to pinpoint and say that it is person X who is responsible for task ABC, so it's not a responsibility that is distributed across a large team. If you have a more average implementation that we see in many countries, we would recommend to have at least five dedicated people serving on the national team. These are implementations that primarily deal with aggregated data. And there are some key factors influencing the size of the core team, and this includes, of course, the scale of the implementation geographically and the number of users. If you have a very small implementation covering only a few sites, you need less people than if you have something covering a big country with thousands of users. The scope of the implementation matters in terms of health areas, for example, how many data sets DHIS2 covers. Is it one program in the DHIS2 implementation? It might require less people than if you are covering every health domain in the country. The complexity of the architecture and implementation, such as interoperability with other systems, also matters for the size of the core team. And the level of decentralization of training support and basic management tasks to subnational level. It's different if you are supporting and training every user from the central level, or if these types of tasks are delegated down to the districts, for example. And as a rule of thumb, case-based systems using Tracker generally requires much more resources than aggregate systems, because the complexity is higher, the number of users are bigger, it requires more training, support devices, etc. Within the core team as a whole, the team has to be competent in a range of different tasks. One is basic requirements, gathering, system analysis and design, knowing methodologies and approaches to do this. The team needs to be competent in DHIS2 customization, architecture, metadata, including how to deal with interoperability with other systems. The team needs to know and understand how to work with implementation best practices, for example, how to interact with users and stakeholders, to harmonize forms, indicators, and how to build solid implementation strategies that will work in their local setting. The team needs skills on how to work on data use and design of data use products, such as dashboards and reports. They need to know how to plan and conduct training of trainers and end-user training, and also some skills in project management and administration to make sure that the projects are running smoothly. As their day-to-day activities, the DHIS2 core team will support the Ministry of Health programs and coordinate with other actors. And some core activities for the country teams will include things such as supporting DHIS2 implementations, such as interacting with users, designing the database, defining and harmonize indicators, designing reports and creating relevant dashboards and so on. They will work on day-to-day maintenance and maybe changing the program slightly if there are new requirements, cleaning up metadata, removing obsolete items that are no longer used, doing monitoring of the server, making sure everything is moving smoothly, updating DHIS2 to the latest version, etc. They will also do a lot of DHIS2 capacity building, particularly working with program managers that will use the data and create their own dashboards, but also with the district statisticians, for example, knowing how to validate, clean, and do analysis of data. The HIST network can support the core team with all of these activities, but the goal is really in the end that they should be self-reliant, but there is always support available if needed. And there are different ways of forming such a team, but there are some key principles that should be followed, but again, not one size fits all, so a core team will not look the same across every country in the world. But you should abide by some key principles, such as one of them is that one donor should not own a DHIS2 core team. So maybe one partner might fund the DHIS2 core team, however, it's important that the core team supports all programs and not just one group of investors. Solid governance should direct the work of the core team. We have a separate section in this course on governance, where the principle is that you have a three-layered governance mechanism where the top level or the governing body will give direction to where DHIS2 is going, and this should really give the direction for the core team. And the core team should aim for harmonization. They should strive for a harmonized system and really avoid silo systems. It's important that the team gets backing from the ministry, but at the same time, they should maintain impartial hiring practices. You want to avoid hiring people you know, but still have a strong backing from the authorities. So you should hire based on competence and merits and not on personal connections. And ideally, the funding should be allocated over the annual budgets of the ministry. It should not be external one-off investments, but it should be something that the ministries or the government fund for regularly and long-term. The core team should finally also support an opportunity-driven or grassroots movement approach to DHIS2. This is the heart and soul of DHIS2, and we've seen that this is beneficial. Lastly, I will talk about different approaches to capacity-building. So there are two main ways that the core team can build their capacity. One is through technical assistance. So this means when the DHIS2 groups are working with the country to solve issues or support on certain topics, they should always involve the country core team when they work. So you learned through apprenticeship or working side-by-side with other experts. The second approach is capacity-building through more formal approaches such as academies, the community of practice, and documentation. So DHIS2 offers a wide range of courses ranging from self-paced fundamental courses to specialized topical training. We have a community of practice, which is a large user forum where you can read what other users have problems with, how they've solved it, and you can also reach out for help there. DHIS2 also has a vast library of documentation where you can learn. The DHIS2 Academy training model looks like this. At the bottom you have what we call fundamentals. This is a self-paced online course that is available in a range of different languages, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese in progress at the moment. Fundamentals course teaches you the basics of DHIS2 and can be done at your own speed. We then have Level 1 academies. This is standardized material across all regions. The courses are delivered by the DHIS network and the language required. We've done Level 1 academies in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages are also possible upon request. These academies are sometimes physical and sometimes virtual. Level 2 academies are more advanced. This is delivered as global trainings by the same core set of trainers within subject matter expertise. The Level 2 does not necessarily indicate the degree of difficulty in all cases, but it's more in-depth learning on specific topics. Primarily these courses are offered in English, but other languages can be possible upon request if there is a need for it. On top of this, we also deliver internal training within the DHIS network to increase our internal capacity. Again, as it says on the right-hand side, technical assistance and co-working between his groups and core country teams is a key principle. Running a DHIS2 team can involve adding budget lines for several things. You need to budget for salary costs for at least three to four people or other means of succumbents or incentives. You need to budget for attending academies, at least two per person per year. It can be virtual or physical academies. It's important to keep up to date with the latest on the DHIS2 and to build skills. It can be useful to budget for some regional visits from the his group to learn if you need support in the country by external experts. And again, create stickiness in the DHIS2 core team, as mentioned before, such as sending people to academies or establishing scholarships. And you will learn more about budgeting later in this course. In summary, you can say that a strong core team is important to implement and support a sustainable DHIS2 system. It's important to expand DHIS2 into new programs and domains. Incapacity building takes place through technical assistance and academies. And lastly, the DHIS2 team should be based in the country but can receive support from outside.