Updated NGB Scorecard Values for US Ski and Snowboard, Moves to the Top of the Rankings

Note: I am posting this update here as we work through some technical issues with our NGB project site at the Sports Governance Center at CU Athletics. We will update that site with the new scores ASAP, thanks for your patience.

Last year, we released the first set of scores for the governance of US Olympic national governing bodies (NGBs) based on evaluation metrics developed by the 2015 Sports Governance Observer of Play the Game. We applied these metric to 22 US Olympic Sport Federations. We will be releasing the scores for the remaining NGBs later this spring.

Since releasing the initial set of scores, we have received feedback from the U.S. Olympic Committee and more than a dozen NGBs. One of the organizations that we heard from was US Ski & Snowboard which provided us with an update on their governance practices, the information that they make available on their website and several challenges to our rankings. You can see their response here in PDF.

Our team used the Ski and Snowboard response as the basis for an updated scoring of Ski & Snowboard with respect to the 36 SGO indicators. Our methodology was the same as first applied: A team of three researchers independently evaluated and scored each of the 36 SGO indicators. Then, for the few indicators for which there was a significant difference in scores among the team, the team met to reach a consensus score.

The full set of rankings can be seen on our homepage and the Ski and Snowboard update is summarized in the table below.

The original aggregate score for Ski and Snowboard was a 66.1, for which we gave a D. The updated score is 80.1, earning Ski and Snowboard a B-. Perhaps more importantly, the updated score vaults Ski and Snowboard to the top of our initial rankings.

Here is how Ski and Snowboard ranks in each of the four categories:

• Transparency = 92%, A-
• Democratic Processes = 79%, C+
• Check and Balances = 86%, B
• Solidarity = 64%, D

We have learned from the USOC that many of the SGO indicators overlap in important respects with the USOC internal compliance standards checklist for the NGBs, but there are also SGO indicators which are of less relevance to USOC and the NGGs. Further, the SGO indicators were originally designed for evaluating international federations and are being applied to US Olympic NGBs. Even with these limitations, the SGO evaluation framework provides a useful, high level tool for evaluating governance from an independent perspective, based solely in publicly available information.

We are in contact with other NGBs and look forward to future updates for other US Olympic organizations.

UPDATED SCORES

US Ski and Snowboard	22-Mar-18
	Old Scores	New scores
Transparency
1.01	4	5
1.02	5	5
1.03	5	5
1.04	1	3
1.05	4	5
1.06	3	5
1.07	2	4
1.08	5	5
1.09	5	5
1.1	5	5
1.11	5	5
1.12	3	3
Average:	3.92	4.58
Sum:	47	55
Democratic Process
2.01	5	5
2.02	5	5
2.03	3	3.5
2.04	1	2
2.05	3	4
2.06	4	3
2.07	5	5
2.08	2	5
2.09	1	2
2.1	4	5
Average:	3.3	3.95
Sum:	33	39.5
Checks and Balances
3.01	4	4.5
3.02	4	5
3.03	4	4.5
3.04	4	4
3.05	2	4
3.06	3	3
3.07	5	5
Average:	3.71	4.29
Sum:	26	30
Solidarity
4.01	3	3
4.02	1	5
4.03	1	1.5
4.04	1	2
4.05	4	5
4.06	1	1
4.07	5	5
Average:	2.29	3.21
Sum:	16	22.5