Anand Ram­per­sad

Hav­ing raised ques­tions and com­ment­ed on the re­spec­tive 2010 man­i­festos of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) gov­ern­ment and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on sport in the two pre­vi­ous columns, it is im­per­a­tive to look ahead to the 2015 elec­tion of­fer­ings on sport.

All po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates' ideas and plans for sport must be ful­ly scru­ti­nised to en­sure that sport is pro­vid­ed with­in the best plan­ning frame­work.

This will en­sure that all the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits are reaped by the pop­u­la­tion.

In oth­er words, those peo­ple who are seek­ing to so­lic­it the votes of the pop­u­la­tion must demon­strate in no un­cer­tain man­ner that sport is be­yond nice speech­es and hand­ing over of funds to en­sure that na­tion­al teams can at­tend re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events.

To move sport for­ward po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates should be con­sid­er­ing im­ple­ment­ing a strate­gic ap­proach to sport.

This ap­proach should rest up­on five (5) main pil­lars:

i) The de­vel­op­ment of a strate­gic frame­work

ii) Us­ing ro­bust re­search to in­form de­ci­sion mak­ing

iii) Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of ar­eas of in­ter­est based up­on the ob­jec­tives of the sport pol­i­cy and re­search un­der­tak­en

iv) Vig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion of all pro­grammes

v) Dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion to al­low for pub­lic scruti­ny

With ref­er­ence to the de­vel­op­ment of a strate­gic frame­work the fol­low­ing should be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion:

�2State in no un­cer­tain terms their strate­gic vi­sion and mis­sion for sport both in terms of the "de­vel­op­ment of sport" and 'sport for de­vel­op­ment

�2There must be a clear­ly de­fined and ar­tic­u­lat­ed sport pol­i­cy which will serve as a work­ing doc­u­ment to pro­mote the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of sport

�2Com­ing out of the sport pol­i­cy, im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies must be iden­ti­fied

�2These im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies must be SMART and aligned to spe­cif­ic tar­gets and out­comes

�2En­sur­ing that there is good gov­er­nance

�2There must be con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion of all im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies to en­sure that the most ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient means of achiev­ing de­sired goals are al­ways utilised.

As it seems to have been very com­mon­place in the past, the lack of ro­bust re­search may have af­fect­ed the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits of many sport pro­grammes. The re­search should be un­der­tak­en by in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions such as the UWI and UTT sport de­part­ments. Such in­sti­tu­tions will have the re­sources to en­gage in re­search as it should be done and do jus­tice to the pro­fes­sion of sport re­search as op­posed to hav­ing per­sons not trained in sport re­search do­ing so.

In oth­er words ro­bust­ly con­duct­ed re­search will pro­vide a sound ba­sis for the ap­pro­pri­ate pro­grammes and will al­so in­form the im­ple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing process­es.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it can save tax­pay­ers from un­nec­es­sary wastage. It is high time the use of sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta be­come part of sport­ing dis­cus­sions for jus­ti­fy­ing and or op­pos­ing de­ci­sions. The days of "feel­ing" and "know so" should be be­hind us when it comes to de­ci­sion mak­ing.

A clear­ly iden­ti­fied strate­gic di­rec­tion cum re­li­able re­search da­ta will al­low for prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of ar­eas that re­quire en­gage­ment. For in­stance, it should be ex­pect­ed that all po­lit­i­cal par­ties will be seek­ing to con­duct na­tion­al sur­veys to de­ter­mine who are the peo­ple who are par­tic­i­pat­ing in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties in re­la­tion to amount of time, fre­quen­cy, age, gen­der, so­cial class, ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, eth­nic­i­ty, re­li­gion, etc.

It is on­ly through such in­for­ma­tion can in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes be ef­fec­tive­ly de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed to achieved stat­ed out­comes. The ab­sence of such an ap­proach may on­ly re­sult in over gen­er­al­ized com­ments about the ben­e­fits of sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties with­out any­one demon­strat­ing ex­act­ly what have been the ben­e­fits.

One of the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing many so­cial pro­grammes in the Caribbean es­pe­cial­ly when dri­ven by gov­ern­ments is that of mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion. And sport is no ex­cep­tion.

In fact be­cause sport is seen as gen­er­al­ly "good," peo­ple may fail to see it as a mech­a­nism for wan­ton wastage of tax­pay­ers' monies through pro­grammes that sound nice and are well in­ten­tioned.

Ef­fec­tive mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion will al­low for the most ef­fec­tive ap­proach to en­sure that there is op­ti­miza­tion of re­sources in all pro­grammes.

The dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic will not on­ly al­low the pub­lic to know what is hap­pen­ing but al­so al­low for them to par­tic­i­pate through scruti­ny. So for in­stance de­spite the good in­ten­tion of the 'Hoop of Life' pro­gramme the ju­ry is still out as to whether or not the pro­gramme af­ter three years yield­ed the de­sired out­comes. And the ab­sence of any pub­lic an­nounce­ment through the use of re­li­able da­ta has the po­ten­tial to fur­ther fu­el spec­u­la­tion that it was not a suc­cess! It will be very in­for­ma­tive if the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can speak about suc­cess­es and fail­ures of the pro­gramme.

Over the last decade more monies have been al­lo­cat­ed to sport than in pre­vi­ous times. This in­di­cate that sport of­fers many av­enues for mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion to im­prove their over­all life whether they are elite ath­letes, or oth­ers seek­ing to build their eco­nom­ic and so­cial cap­i­tal. There­fore, it's oblig­a­tory that we con­stant­ly scru­ti­nise our politi­cians through their de­ci­sion mak­ing to en­sure that the best de­ci­sions are al­ways made on be­half of sport and for the pop­u­la­tion. It is a wor­thy nui­sance!