Good governance visualised in Germany

With colourful graphs and dashboards visualising the level of good governance in a line of German sports federations, another seminar within the Erasmus+ project, the National Sports Governance Observer (NSGO), was held on May 15.

The NSGO project is led by Play the Game and involves eight European countries aiming at creating a benchmarking tool that can measure the state of governance in national sports federations.

A group of researchers from the Sports University Cologne and representatives from German sports federations got together to discuss the results of this recent research into good governance in national sports federations including tennis, gymnastics, track and field, triathlon and the national umbrella federation for sports.

The researchers in charge of reviewing the federations had prepared posters for each of the federations examined that provided graphic representations of the results and outset for discussion.

Walking among the posters, participants, both from the federations in question and other participants, could discuss particularities, strengths and weaknesses of the federations examined.

“Fruitful and interesting”
The purpose of the national seminars national seminars is to build capacity for future efforts in the field of governance and to strengthen the communication and networking across stakeholder groups in the national setting. According to Ninja Putzmann, a member of the NSGO project coordination group in Germany and a lecturer at the German Sports University in Cologne, the German seminar succeeded in that.

“Overall, the meeting was fruitful and interesting and we received constructive feedback from the attendees,” Putzmann said after the seminar.

“The format of the meeting was also a success and an intimate atmosphere added to the debate. Through individual and open discussions we achieved a positive attitude concerning the topic of good governance.”

“As a next step we will arrange interviews with the federations to explore and assess further particularities and explain similarities as well as differences between the national sports federations in Germany,” Putzmann added.

There will be a national NSGO seminar held in each of the partner countries and Belgium, Cyprus, Romania have already held theirs. In the coming months, seminars will be held in the remaining partner countries there will also be seminars in the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland. The NSGO project will conclude with a final seminar in Leuven, Belgium, presenting project results and expert speakers.