Data Governance and Ethics in Sports: Who's Responsible For it?

Data Governance and Ethics in Sports

The shift towards data-driven decision-making in sports has been accelerating at a significant rate over the last decade. The advancements in technology used to collect and generate data, combined with the availability of enterprise software used to manage and augment it, have accelerated this shift. It is now common practice in sports performance environments for data scientists to have access to significant volumes of athlete data. The type of data being collected has also arguably become much more intrusive. For example, advancements in the precision of wearable technology have facilitated the collection of sophisticated biometric data such as blood oxygen levels and electrocardiogram based measures. Acknowledging these advancements and taking into consideration the sensitive nature of the data being collected, it seems more important than ever to explore the current state of governance and ethics in high-performance sport. A good starting point could be with the seemingly simple, but important question; Who is ultimately responsible for upholding best practice governance and ethics in sporting organisations?

Data governance is the practice of having control and authority over the management of data. The overall aim of data governance is to maximise the value of data in an organisation and to reduce or moderate any potential risks which may emerge. The introduction of new legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has put pressure on some organisations to review and reflect on how they use and store data. A thorough audit will evidently uncover deficiencies and present challenges both from a technical standpoint and an organisational one. Factors such as ambiguous personnel roles and responsibilities, undefined or unclear procedures and policies, and a lack of managerial knowledge or support can create blind spots and put organisations at risk.Whilst all of the aforementioned factors are worthy of commentary this post will focus on the personnel roles and responsibilities aspect of data governance and ethics in high-performance environments.

In the current landscape, it is common for data scientists to be embedded in specific departments typically reporting to non-technical managers. For example, a data scientist embedded in the sports science department may report to the Head of Sports Science. Ordinarily department managers don’t have extensive training in data science or are well-versed in developing data governance frameworks. This can create a culture of self-governance and self-regulation which presents its own set of legal and ethical risk factors.

In some more analytically mature sporting organisations, a Head of Data Science or even a Chief Data Officer may be employed to govern data standards, create suitable policies and coordinate data owners across various domains or departments. However, the unique characteristics of high-performance sport permit staff outside of the domain of analytics to be collectors, contributors and owners of critical organisational data, making it difficult to apply traditional data governance models and frameworks. In future posts, we will explore the use of specific tools like the RACI matrix to assign data governance and management roles. For now, I will leave you to reflect on your own organisation and consider the question of who is responsible for upholding best practice governance and ethics in your organisation.