Transnational Project Meeting of the Open Data for Sport Governance project in Slovenia

Open Data for Sport Governance is an Erasmus+ project (within the category of promoting and supporting good governance in sport), co-funded by the European Union, led by the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia (INEFC Barcelona), and developed jointly with the collaboration of the Centre for Law and Economics of Sport (CDES, France), the Lithuanian Sports Federation (LUSF, Lithuania), the Centre for the Organisation for Sports Education (OPES, Italy), SPORTMALTA (Malta), the Portuguese Institute of Sport and Youth (IPDJ, Portugal) and the Olympic Committee of Slovenia (Slovenia).

The overall objective of the project is to create a governance and management tool to analyse, compare and help European sport organisations to be managed in a more efficient and transparent way. The aim is therefore to help sport managers by providing them with data on management indicators and, through the IT tool, to position their organisation in comparison with the score of the sport organisations participating in the project. In this way, the tool can become a source of information that assists sport organisations in setting their short- and long-term objectives.
The project focuses on the evaluation of sports organisations in terms of eight dimensions, considering various parameters and indicators in each of them. Thus, the IT tool provides the positioning of the entities in relation to Governance, Strategy, Sport, Marketing, Human Resources, Procedures and Technology, Social Responsibility, and Finance. The platform provides all this information visually through bar charts, comparative tables, and colours to help interpret the data provided.

In a first phase, the project was aimed at sports organisations such as sports federations, clubs, and multi-sports clubs. The project analysed sports modalities common to the 7 countries participating in the project, such as football, basketball, swimming, tennis, and athletics, but also some specific sports from each of the countries. Finally, the project sample consists of a total of 518 sports organisations (83 sports federations and 434 clubs, of which 50 are multi-sports clubs).

Data collection was approached by means of a structured questionnaire to obtain primary quantitative and qualitative data from the sports organisations.
The results of applying a multi-dimensional framework of analysis across sport organisations reveals a wide range of scores across all organisations and considerable room for improvement against the metrics. While it may not be necessary to quantify performance in all these areas to understand that there are opportunities for improvement, we believe that this analytical perspective can help organisations to set their short and medium-term priorities, and consequently to promote change (at individual, organisational or sectoral level) in those areas where there is room for improvement. In conclusion, this project can contribute to the sustainability and consolidation of the sport model of our sport organisations.

Those responsible for the project would like to thank the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia, the General Secretariat of Sport and all those responsible of sports federations and clubs for the support necessary to develop this project.

This project has been co-funded by the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia and the European Union, in the framework of the Erasmus+ Sport Programme. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the consortium of partner associations working on the Open Data For Sport Governance initiative and can in no way be taken to reflect the position of the INEFC, the European Union or the management structures of the Erasmus+ Sport programme.