According to World Rowing, this week the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) published its third review of International Federation Governance, an evaluation tool which was developed to guide International Sports Federations towards better governance.

FISA, as one of the smaller International Federations, has shown year on year improvements across the three governance reviews made so far despite its limited resources. 

World Rowing say that gender equity on IF Executive Boards is one of the key areas highlighted by the ASOIF Governance Review: “FISA is recognised in this respect, with over 40% female representation on both the FISA Executive Committee and the FISA Council (43% and 41% female representation respectively).”

“Good governance has long been a top priority for the World Rowing Federation, FISA, and we are proud to have made valuable and concrete improvements in our key prioritised areas,” said FISA President Jean-Christophe Rolland. “We have long considered gender equality at the Executive and Council level to be essential.”

The report also states that the difference between the self-assessed and moderated scores of 4 is much lower than the average markdown for 2019-20 of 13 across all IFs and FISA has comfortably exceeded the target score of 120 set by the ASOIF Governance Taskforce.

Click here to read the full report

ASOIF has also published a list of best practice governance examples from IFs and FISA reportedly featured in five areas, including Gender Balance, Safeguarding Programmes and the publication of General Assembly documents. 

ASOIF’s Members Good Governance Practice Examples can be seen here.

World Rowing say that the next step is “the 2020 FISA Extraordinary Congress in October with amongst other proposals, the introduction of an Audit Committee consisting of majority independent membership.”