Key activities
In order for Sport Australia to deliver on our high performance and participation objectives, we need a strong and sustainable sport industry. In 2017–18, Sport Australia focused on supporting NSOs and other sport sector partners through improvements in governance, with a specific focus on integrity and child safety; workforce development, including gender equality; coaching and officiating; and digital capability. Sport Australia continued to progress the implementation of the Mandatory Sports Governance Principles, and monitoring and development of organisational capability through our organisational development tool, Sport.Scan, which is designed to measure and track improvements in the organisational capability of NSOs. In 2017–18, Sport Australia also focused on work across community infrastructure.
Key activity areas included:
- continuing to help sporting organisations improve their governance and drive united behaviours through national, state and territory levels
- developing and delivering sector initiatives to optimise coach, official and leader talent and support sports to develop workforce strategies
- assisting sports to identify commercial opportunities to improve their financial sustainability
- helping sports develop their digital capability to ensure they are connecting with their customers effectively and utilising technology to support growth and innovation
- evolving member and child protection to better support those who participate in, and deliver, sport for children.
Success is determined by the improvement in NSO organisational capability, as measured by Sport.Scan. Capability building activities are reflected in PBS Program Objective C, improving the sustainability of sports. Program Objective C outlines how Sport Australia will contribute to Outcome 1.
Our results
Performance criteria | Improved organisational capability of national sporting organisations |
|---|---|
2017–18 target | The organisational development assessment shows improvement in the organisational capability of targeted national sporting organisations, compared to the previous year. |
Result | Achieved |
Supporting statement | In 2017–18, the average result for the top seven sports was 90 per cent, compared to 68 per cent in 2016-17. The remaining sports in the top 23 maintained an average result of 74 per cent in 2017–18. |
Source: ASC Corporate Plan 2017–2021, page 13. Portfolio Budget Statements 2017–18, program objective C, page 275.
In 2017–18, Sport Australia implemented improvements in data collection to the Sport.Scan process, allowing for a more robust and representative result for each sport. Sport.Scan assessments are included as a part of the ASPR process undertaken by Sport Australia and cover the 23 sports which receive the largest share of Sport Australia funding.
In 2017–18, there was a focus on the top seven funded sports, in particular across governance reform, which has contributed to a significant increase in organisational capability across these sports. In total, the top seven sports saw an increase of 22 per cent in their ratings compared to 2016–17, from 68 per cent to 90 per cent, while the remaining 16 sports maintained an average result of 74 per cent.
A key capability project was the release of the Child Safe Sport Framework. The Framework, released in November 2017 after three years of research, engagement and consultation, is designed to help NSOs implement child safe approaches across their sports and support a safeguarding culture at all levels of sport. The Framework includes a toolkit, process and education program, and is at the core of leading NSOs in child safe sport practices. This work reflects Sport Australia’s commitment to ensuring that all involved in Australian sport have a clear understanding of what constitutes child safe sport, and how to implement this in practice.
Case study: One management
Sport Australia has continued to partner with targeted NSOs to improve their governance systems to achieve a unified and central approach to management. The ‘One Management’ governance model enables sporting bodies operating in the Federated Model system to streamline management processes, reduce administrative and overhead costs, and improve leadership capabilities and decision-making processes.
Following the success of the Australian Sailing One Sailing project, work has continued to refine the reform process to better prepare sporting bodies to transition to the contemporary ‘One Management’ model. With the support of Sport Australia, Golf Australia (GA) is the latest NSO to commence the transition to One Management.
‘One Golf’ will bring all participating state and territory governing bodies under the GA umbrella, freeing up funding and resources to enable the sport to focus on strategic priorities. Sport Australia, in partnership with external advisory organisations, has concluded the transformation project to identify the steps needed to support GA and its members to undertake such a significant organisational project. To date, five of the seven states have made in-principle commitments to the model with implementation planned to continue in 2018.