UK Sport

Mission 2012 - how it works

How will Mission 2012 take monitoring and evaluation to a new level and give us a better chance of achieving or even surpassing our performance ambitions in 5 years time? Whilst the information sought will not necessarily be new, it will seek to address the results in a different way. For a start, Mission 2012 will focus uncompromisingly on three areas that will be critical to delivering not just short term success but a transformed high-performance system:

• Athlete Performance and Development
Primarily objective measurement – results on the field of play and performance against key milestone targets and progress of athletes along the performance pathway. This will be coupled however with more subjective elements based around athlete views and perceptions to ensure that athletes understand and feel connected to the programmes they are part of (the existing UK Sport Athlete Survey will be conducted annually and flow directly into the Mission 2012 process).

• The Performance System and Governance
Ensuring that the right systems and processes are not only in place, but working effectively – from talent identification, coaching and medical support through to training and competition plans as well as corporate and financial governance. The process will review if everyone within the system is appropriately empowered to do their job

• Leadership and Performance Climate
The examination in this area will seek to ensure that the leadership and culture within the governing body and its performance programmes is conducive to delivering the right outcomes.

It will be individual sport’s responsibility to reflect on their performance in each area in consultation with their designated UK Sport Performance Programme Consultant, and highlight any issues that threaten their own degree of ambition for 2012. Where issues exist, expertise and support will be identified to ascertain the extent of the problem and what it will take to fix it. The process will also seek to identify and share best practice, making sure that British athletes benefit from the best ways of working that exist anywhere within our high-performance system.

Ultimately, every sport’s assessment of its performance in these three key areas will be considered by UK Sport’s Performance Panel and the colour of the ‘traffic light’ confirmed – from green, where everything is essentially on track, to red, where a sport will almost certainly be unable to achieve its ambitions as a result of significant blockages within the system. Where issues exist, the focus will be on resolving them as quickly as possible, with the development of positive action plans.

What will be required?

UK Sport is keen to ensure that the practical effects of Mission 2012 are not to deflect attention from the critical preparations currently underway for next year’s Games in Beijing. Equally, the process must not be unreasonably burdensome in terms of administration.  This is one area where our consultation, and the trial with UK Athletics commencing this week, will be focused.

For the first quarter’s assessment, UK Sport’s Performance Programme Consultants will work with their current respective sports to facilitate sport’s self-assessment of their status in each of the three categories outlined above. The end result will be a submission of around two sides of A4, highlighting any issues that exist within each area, together with recommended actions to address them and an idea of timescales for their resolution. Each area will be traffic-lighted and an overall traffic based on the sport’s assessment of progress against its 2012 ambition.

This first quarter will provide a benchmark comprising every sport’s view on how they currently stand, which will be presented to the Performance Panel. Future quarters' inputs will still be led by sport’s self-assessment, but will involve more active dialogue with UK Sport prior to their submission.

The Timescales

The first meeting of the Performance Panel is scheduled to be held in November. In order to allow time for papers to be prepared, we anticipate our Performance Programme Consultants (PPC) commencing their dialogue with each sport around one month in advance of the meeting.

Following the Panel meeting, the UK Sport PPC for each sport will feed back on the relevant discussions and any further proposed action within seven days. UK Sport’s Board will meet no later than 3 weeks after the Panel and a media briefing will be held shortly thereafter, where results will be brought into the public domain.

The process will then continue quarterly.

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