The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) con­tin­ues to push for na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) to prac­tice good gov­er­nance, so on Sat­ur­day at its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM), the com­mit­tee pre­sent­ed its gov­er­nance re­port and made rec­om­men­da­tions to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of each mem­ber or­gan­i­sa­tion.

TTOC pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, his ex­ec­u­tive and mem­bers gath­ered vir­tu­al­ly as a re­sult of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which forced the post­pone­ment of the AGM which was due at the end of April.

Us­ing the good gov­er­nance com­mit­ment of sev­en points pre­sent­ed by the TTOC ex­ec­u­tive to the af­fil­i­ates for ap­proval and adop­tion at the AGM back in 2016 as a re­sult of a se­ries of in­ter­views and a work­shop by Pro­fes­sor Leigh Robin­son, the ex­pert from the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC), it was re­vealed that the short­fall in man­age­ment skills which was seen in 2015, is still valid to­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port: "Ac­tiv­i­ties such as mar­ket­ing, plan­ning and per­for­mance as­sess­ment are short-changed or even ne­glect­ed in favour of the more tech­ni­cal as­pects of the sport such as coach­ing and com­pe­ti­tion and NSOs are al­so very much in need of lead­er­ship train­ing."

Last year, the TTOC con­duct­ed an au­dit of the NSOs in re­la­tion to the 2016 good gov­er­nance com­mit­ment. This re­port was set out to es­tab­lish a base­line mea­sure­ment of the ex­tent to which the sev­en el­e­ments of Pro­fes­sor Robin­son’s pro­posed com­mit­ment to good gov­er­nance have been adopt­ed.

Based on the dis­cus­sions held and ques­tion­naires com­plet­ed dur­ing last year's au­dit, it was not­ed that with­in the three-year pe­ri­od since the com­mit­ment was made, on­ly two of the el­e­ments have been im­ple­ment­ed by a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of NSOs. The first is a con­sti­tu­tion­al re­view and the sec­ond is, hav­ing role out­lined for board po­si­tions.

As a re­sult of these find­ings, the TTOC made a fur­ther com­mit­ment to the code stat­ing: "As we ap­proach an­oth­er year when the World con­tin­ues to face so much un­cer­tain­ty let us make use of this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect and cre­ate the strate­gies to ho­n­our our com­mit­ment to the sev­en codes of 2016 to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our or­gan­i­sa­tions and the prac­tice of good gov­er­nance."

Lewis en­hanced this state­ment say­ing: "I pre­dict the TTOC Gov­er­nance re­port will be­come an es­sen­tial and an­tic­i­pat­ed re­port by Sport In­dus­try TT stake­hold­ers. We will con­tin­ue to work with sport gov­er­nance ex­perts such as Dr Leigh Robin­son to im­prove the re­port­ing mech­a­nism.

"We al­so have the Sport In­tegri­ty Glob­al Al­liance (SIGA) Uni­ver­sal stan­dards and IOC gov­er­nance stan­dards."

Not­ed in the an­nu­al re­port was the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the num­ber of re­quests to set­tle dis­putes be­tween ath­letes and their re­spec­tive NSOs which has made the thrust by the TTOC for good gov­er­nance, even more rel­e­vant.

Un­der the head­ing me­di­a­tion/ar­bi­tra­tion it said: "Over the year, the TTOC has ex­pe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the num­ber of re­quests for me­di­a­tion/ar­bi­tra­tion be­tween ath­letes and their re­spec­tive NSOs. For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber 2019, the TTOC fa­cil­i­tat­ed six ar­bi­tra­tion hear­ings and three ar­bi­tra­tion ap­peal hear­ings. Each hear­ing lasts ap­prox­i­mate­ly two hours and re­quires a hear­ing com­mit­tee of at least three per­sons.

"All hear­ings fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the TTOC were suc­cess­ful­ly re­solved."

Good news but the TTOC feels that it could bet­ter serve these or­gan­i­sa­tions by de­vel­op­ing strate­gic goals and di­rec­tion, help the re­spec­tive boards mon­i­tor the per­for­mance of its or­gan­i­sa­tion to en­sure it achieves these goals, and ba­si­cal­ly en­sure that the NSO acts in the best in­ter­ests of its mem­bers.

"It was clear from the au­dit in­ter­views that, while af­fil­i­ates read and even re­viewed their con­sti­tu­tions, they were not al­ways aware of what im­pli­ca­tions the lan­guage might have on their op­er­a­tions. In some in­stances, the lan­guage was more le­gal than prac­ti­cal, and in oth­ers, it was vague and left room for mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion," the re­port stat­ed. "Our first rec­om­men­da­tion, there­fore, is to en­sure that all NSOs are ad­e­quate­ly equipped and in­formed to un­der­stand, in­ter­pret and amend their con­sti­tu­tions."

The re­port ad­vised that this can be ac­com­plished through a se­ries of prac­ti­cal work­shops, with­in which or­gan­i­sa­tions, grouped ac­cord­ing to their size or sim­i­lar­i­ty of sport (e.g. team sports), are ed­u­cat­ed, trained and ad­vised by qual­i­fied per­sons on each as­pect of their con­sti­tu­tion.

"It is a process of en­gage­ment and fa­cil­i­tat­ing," said Lewis. "In my view, it's im­por­tant that we not use the re­port as a stick or puni­tive or to name and shame. We build aware­ness and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for im­prove­ment."

The re­port sug­gest­ed that NSOs are al­so very much in need of lead­er­ship train­ing. The pri­or­i­ties of NSOs are the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of their sport, while the more strate­gic ac­tiv­i­ties are giv­en at­ten­tion main­ly for re­port­ing pur­pos­es.

In an ef­fort to en­cour­age bet­ter prac­tices, the TTOC is con­sid­er­ing im­ple­ment­ing a mech­a­nism that re­wards af­fil­i­ates who pro­duce mea­sur­able ev­i­dence of good gov­er­nance with­in a par­tic­u­lar fund­ing or oth­er av­enues that can act as ex­ter­nal mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tors for NSOs to lead in good gov­er­nance prac­tices or fol­low the ex­am­ples of those who do.

"Even­tu­al­ly it will get to the point where the re­port will be used as a cred­i­ble ref­er­ence point on gov­er­nance by the Min­istry of Sport, Sport Com­pa­ny and Cor­po­rate T&T," said Lewis.