Update on ASOIF governance shows some improvement

There is progress in the governance of the Olympic summer federations, said the Association of Olympic Summer Sports (ASOIF), when revealing their second governance review into the member IFs at their General Assembly held during the SportAccord Convention taking place this week in Bangkok, Thailand.

With an overall rise in scores, the review indicates a general improvement in the IF governance since the first review revealed last year. In spite of the positive notes, Francesco Ricci Bitti, ASOIF President and Governance Taskforce Chair, underlined that there are still challenges to take on in terms of securing a better governance in the international federations included in the review.

“It is great to see that there has been considerable progress in IF governance since our first review,” Ricci Bitti said according to a press release from the ASOIF.

“However, there are still very large differences between the best performing IFs and the others and a great deal of work remains to be done. That’s why we will set up a new, permanent Governance Monitoring Unit which will guide IFs on governance matters.”

The review is made through a self-evaluation process in which the federations rate their own achievements on a scale from 0-4 on 50 different indicators covering five sections: transparency, integrity, democracy, development and control mechanisms. The maximum score of a federation is therefore 200. The federation with the highest score obtained 177, while the lowest scoring federation only reached 46.

The score of the federations is then moderated by independent consultancy firm, iTrust Sport, for accuracy. In general, the federations’ own score is a bit higher than the moderated.

Key findings of the review include:

• Half of the 28 IFs reviewed during the first review in 2017 have improved their overall score.
• In general, there has been a rise in the mean score of the federations
• Even small federations score in the high end, proving that limited means is not necessarily a hindrance for living up to good governance criteria
• There is an increased attention on whistleblowing. But some federations still lack a proper mechanism to address this.
• Over all, the review finds an improvement in the area of transparency with a higher number of federations publishing financial information such as annual reports.
• There is still a large gap between the best and the weakest performing federation.

This year, as well as in 2017, the ASOIF report does not reveal the scores or performance of the individual federations.

The ASOIF Governance Monitoring Unit in charge of overseeing the review will become a permanent entity helping ASOIF members improve their governance through the assessment tool behind the governance review as well as by providing guidance, identifying priorities etc.