 So, in this session, we will talk about why budgeting is important. So, starting a DHS2 project, even if it's starting from scratch or if it's including a new program, it's important to budget as well. And in this session, we will address why budgeting is important, understanding the areas in a DHS2 implementation that requires funding, understanding what the cost drivers of a DHS2 implementation is and also how to perform a budget review for a DHS2 implementation. So, first, I will address why budgeting is important. There are several reasons why creating a proper budget is important for a DHS2 implementation. Firstly, it's important to be able to allocate appropriate resources to the projects. If you don't plan properly and you don't set aside funding for this, you might end up with a project that is unrealistic to solve or you will run into problems. Writing a good budget also sets scope and expectations for the projects. So, doing your budget as a collaborative exercise between the different partners really highlights how much money you have versus the activities that you've planned and it sets out expectations ahead of the project. It also ensures that all parts of the implementation is funded. Very often, there is funding available for, for example, configuring DHS2 without enough funding to sustain it over time. And a good budget also makes sure that there is funding available for a maintenance phase, not only for setting up, but also to maintain the system over time. And a proper budget would also support phased implementation and scaling. So, while you would think about the cost of setting up the DHS2 program in terms of getting requirement and configuring the project and training end users, a proper budget would also take into consideration that maybe you would scale a system for districts in year one and then four more districts in year two and four more districts in year three. So, a good budget would then allocate money for all three years. So, when you're planning and budgeting your DHS2 project, it's important to remember that you do not only have to budget for a project that you want to do, such as building an HIV tracker. It's also important that the foundational areas of a DHS2 implementation in a country gets funding. This can be illustrated here by the DHS2 maturity profile that you see on the right. Here, this is an illustration of the foundational pieces that's really underpinning the DHS2 programs. For example, does the country have a proper plan for training their end users? How is the infrastructure situation, the status of the core team, et cetera? So, making sure that there is funding available for also these topics are important to have a sustainable health information system. And looking at it in a holistic way like this can also align investors and make sure that several partners can co-invest in the same domains. Using this tool can also help you to assist in planning DHS2 implementation and also identify areas that are in need of more in-depth evaluation and monitoring. And this is important for budgeting purposes to make sure that everything is covered in your plan, that there is not big funding gaps that you haven't addressed. Next, I will discuss key areas that require funding in a DHS2 implementation. So roughly costs can be divided into the following categories. You have local personnel costs. This means money going to the DHS2 core team in the country and capacity building such as salaries, sending people to courses, letting them learn new things, setting aside time for peer learning, et cetera. A second cost category is technical assistance costs. These are costs that comes from hiring his groups or other experts, including fees and travel costs for other people to come and help the country. And then lastly, we have local operational costs. These are the costs that accrue in the country to do things like training, buying devices, hosting, supporting end users, et cetera. And the largest investments in a DHS2 project are associated with building and maintaining local capacity in the country. But for new implementations, there are also costs associated to getting starting up. And here, technical assistance is important. So generally, you can say that depending on the state of the country or the DHS2 maturity of the country, the type of costs will differ. So in an early stage of an implementation, for example, there might be more need for external support, even for quite routinely and basic activities. But as local capacity builds and you have a strong core team, most of these activities can be handled locally or internally. And then outside expertise will then maybe be used for more advanced tasks or capacity building in new areas or for new functionality. An important distinction when it comes to budgeting is one-off versus recurring costs. And a DHS2 implementation needs to budget for both of them. So typical one-off costs, these are costs that occur once. So in the context of a DHS2 implementation, this means costs associated to gathering requirements and configuring the initial system. For example, buying equipment or devices or buying servers. This is something that you do once. But associated to these costs, there are also recurring costs that I will get back to. So recurring costs are costs that are repeated at regular levels. So the bills keep coming again and again and again. And this can be costs that are related to the core team, for example, salaries or training costs. It's training and refresher training of staff. You have to do this every year. Costs associated with repairing, maintaining and replacing devices and servers. This is especially important for our tracker projects with a lot of devices. Costs associated to connectivity, making sure that the users have internets, that someone is paying the hosting bills, that there is money for audits, for example, security audits of the system. And also that there is costs set aside for system changes, maintenance and improvements of the system. This is costs that will come again and again. And recurring costs can often be neglected when your budget, but they can very often be the largest cost overall in a project. So again, coming back to the foundational pieces of DHS2, it's really important to budget for the foundational domains as outlined in the DHS2 maturity tools. And examples of activities or budget lines in these domains, it can include TA costs, such as supporting the core team, TA to support capacity building or TA to support development of standard operating procedures, training material, etc. Money to support workshops or meetings to improve one of these foundational areas, salaries or other incentives to the core team, academies, social costs, such as office space, mobile phones, etc. And infrastructure, laptops, internet, etc. And specifically budgeting for the DHS2 core team is important. These are costs that occur again and again. And it's important to set aside money to have salary for around three to four people in a DHS2 core team. They should have funding to attend DHS2 academies, to have some regional visits from a mentor from another, maybe more expert, his group, for example, coming a couple of times a year to do capacity building, training, to have the core team learn new things and build expertise within the network, this network. And then we also know that it's a problem that DHS2 core teams often lose members to other organizations that perhaps pay better. And creating what we've called stickiness to the DHS2 core team means that it might be wise to put aside expert resources on the budget to encourage people to stay on the team. It can be incentives such as academies, scholarships for master or PhD participation courses, etc. And then finally, I'll talk about a little checklist for a budget review. So there are different approaches to incorporating a new health domain into DHS2. So when DHS2 is being introduced as a data collection tool, this can be done on the basis of an existing information flow and using existing primary data collection tools as part of a revision of the overall reporting system. And potentially global metadata configuration packages may be used for parts of this process. And furthermore, another system may be used for data collection and integrated in DHS2 through interoperability solution. This is for aggregate data if you want to review an aggregate budget. And these different scenarios, they have implications for the planning and budgeting. So in general, you could say that a project to introduce a new health area into DHS2 for aggregate data will require funding for things like orientation meetings with program staff, with the ministry, with the history teams and other stakeholders. It requires money set aside for a requirement gathering process, the configuration itself, and testing. And then another important budget post that you need to look for when you're reviewing your budget is if there's money set aside for training or refresher training. And in addition, there are of course also the local costs mentioned before, such as devices, salaries, training for the staff as described above. If you want to do a budget review for a tracker project or individual data projects, it's a little bit more complex. You need to be aware of more factors. So using tracker, it means there'll be more end users, hence there is a bigger need for training, devices, and support. And developing and implementing a tracker program, it requires that the DHS2 core team work closely with clinical staff to understand their work processes. It's a much more time consuming design process to build a good tracker program because the program will be used maybe in the clinic at point of care by a health professional. So you really have to spend time to understand how the tracker program can best fit in that person's work practice. And hence they would need more time to develop a tracker program than an aggregate. Looking at the budget for a tracker project, you should also look for an item that addresses field testing. So a tracker should be field tested in a realistic setting and adjusted based on the results of the testing. And this means both budgeting for remote guidance and on-site technical assistance. And also possibly travel funds to go out and see how this works in practice. In sum, we can say that a tracker program, it affects more users. It requires training a lot more people. The end user training, the devices, the connectivity, the support are much larger budget items. And hence are generally a lot more costly to do than aggregate. We have more resources on considering tracker implementation projects that can be found on our website or in the link here. And again, remember to budget for strengthening the foundational areas of DHS2 that are in need of improvement in parallel. So you ensure that the project is successful. UIO has several tools to support with budgeting. This is one example where we have laid out a basic budget for both aggregate and tracker and some interoperability work and mobile deployments. But you can see here in the budget that the yellow markings, these are variable costs. So for example, if we look at the top line on aggregate packages, the budget will vary depending on how many users you have, how much it costs to train a user in your country, while the other costs are relatively fixed. If you then move down to the tracker section below the blue square, maybe the training costs are higher, maybe there are more users, and this will really impact the implementation cost. And then if you look down on the purple line or the orange line below on add mobile deployment, if devices are not yet deployed, it's also possible to see here that devices, mobile device management and connectivity are quite big cost drivers that will bring the price up for your project. And hopefully you can maybe collaborate with another program to see if you can reuse devices, et cetera. But this overview here can give like the basics and can help you set up a quick budget to see if you remembered to cover all sections. So in summary, building a budget for a DHS to implementation is really important to establish the scope and ensure that resources are available for all phases of your project. The maturity profile tool can help identify areas that require investments. You need to remember local personnel, technical assistance and local operational costs. We've learned about the difference between one-off and recurrent costs. Both need to be reflected in a budget. Again, remember to budget for the foundational DHS-2 domains and there are different considerations budgeting for aggregates and tracker.