During this step, you will get to understand the key stakeholders in a programme and their inter- relationships. You will provide a problem statement pertaining the programme in question and identify key policies, laws and regulations. At the end of this step, you will be able to identify who is involved in the design and implementation of the programme and all the other role players, map the flow of funds and map service delivery processes.

During this step you will get to understand exactly how the programme works, what the underlying assumptions were and use this information to map the processes involved in delivering the programme.

During this step, you will identify the performance indicators as well as the administrative information. This will help you to analyse performance trends and patterns. This step requires some skill in the development of indicators and gathering relevant administrative information. The step is critical in order to assess quality of outputs, efficiency in resource utilization and economy in procurement.

During this step you will consolidate and clean raw expenditure data, and create ‘expenditure buckets’. This will allow you to analyse the expenditure to identify different trends and patterns. Once all the analysis is done opportunities for savings can be identified.

During this step, you will identify the drivers of programme costs, build a costing model and then explore the fiscal implications of different decisions via scenarios. This modelling process allow you to identify policy choices, expenditure cuts and savings, as well as trade-offs between the different scenarios.

During this last step, you will have time to write your report using the spending review format. It is important to write a concise report that flows logically and has a clear structure, especially if you need to help non-experts to understand those ideas and see their value. The report should present a cogent argument based on sound technical analysis.