The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations said today that it has made progress towards its goal of improved governance standards of its member international federations, with 24 of its 28 members having completed a questionnaire on the state of their governance and the remaining four expected to be returned “over the next few days.”
Information required from the federations included the state of their compliance with the Olympic Charter, World Anti-Doping Code and other IOC Code of Conduct matters and “five key principles including transparency, integrity, democracy, development/solidarity and control mechanisms.”
ASOIF created its governance taskforce in November 2015 and the questionnaire was distributed in November 2016 with a submission date of 27 January 2017, leading one founder member of the recently-formed Sport Integrity Global Alliance to call ASOIF’s progress on the issue “glacial” at a forum on sport integrity hosted by SIGA in London yesterday.
However, Francesco Ricci Bitti, ASOIF’s president, said: “This response from our member IFs and their commitment to improving governance is gratifying and I am very proud of the effort that has gone into this project so far.
“ASOIF took this on because it was apparent that all of our members are committed to improved governance by analysing their model to see what upgrades and amendments are required. The Summer IFs take their leadership role very seriously and an important part of this is to ensure a culture of good governance and transparency across all federations.”
ASOIF said: “The next steps are to analyse the data and present a preliminary report at the ASOIF General Assembly in Aarhus, Denmark on 4 April 2017 and then work with each IF to upgrade and improve their respective governance model. ASOIF is committed to ensuring that the governance of IFs continues to be fit for purpose.”
SIGA has signed a so-called ‘Declaration of Core Principles on Sport Integrity’, a set of 12 overarching principles which, it claims, if fully adopted throughout the industry, would ensure the implementation of the highest standards on good governance, financial and sport-betting integrity in sport.
SIGA was due to be officially instituted today as an independent organisation presently numbering more than 70 members, including LaLiga, the Commonwealth Games Federation, MasterCard, Deloitte, the Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees, the European Professional Football Leagues, the Portuguese Olympic Committee and Dow Jones.