Board of Management
The Doping Authority has a board with three members: a chair, a secretary and a treasurer. The NOC*NSF nominates the secretary, and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport nominates the treasurer. In 2011, the post of secretary passed from Conny van Bentum to Marc Benninga. A full list of the members of the board can be found in annex 2.
The board delegates the responsibility for day-to-day matters, and for policy preparation and implementation, to the director. In other words, the board provides 'overall' direction.
Advisory Board
Under its articles of association, the Doping Authority has an Advisory Board. At year-end 2011, the Advisory Board comprised seven members (meaning that the board is up to strength), who all represent specific interest groups or a specific area of expertise. The Athletes' Committee has also appointed a deputy (Hinkelien Schreuder) who will take over from Femke Dekker (the usual Advisory Board member representing the Athletes' Committee) when required. The task of the Advisory Board is to advise the board, either on request or at its own initiative. It meets a few times a year. A list of the members of the Advisory Board can be found in annex 2.
Office staff
The Doping Authority has two departments (Control and Prevention), three administrative officers and a secretarial department with two members of staff. At year-end 2011, the office organisation comprised 13 people and there was one vacancy, amounting to 11.8 FTEs. For an overview, the reader is referred to annex 3.
Doping Control Officials (DCOs)
In addition to the permanent staff, there were 28 part-time Doping Control Officials at the end of 2011 (20 men and 8 women, see annex 4), who were appointed under 'minimum hours' contracts.
Quality
Anti-doping policy places considerable importance on delivering quality. Many doping organisations therefore work with quality systems. This is particularly relevant for the implementation of doping controls: the National Doping Regulations require ISO certification as a precondition for conducting controls. However, other tasks such as the granting of therapeutic use exemptions and prevention activities should, in our view, also meet ISO standards. The Doping Authority and its predecessors in law received ISO certification back in 1998.
Furthermore, in May, a Complaints Procedure was adopted and published on the website. The procedure describes how the Doping Authority processes complaints about its actions. It should be pointed out that no single complaint was received during the year under review.
Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee (TUE committee)
One of the provisions in the doping regulations relates to the procedure for the use of prohibited medication. The Doping Authority has established, for the Dutch sports associations, a committee known as the Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee (TUE committee), which consists of independent doctors.
In formal terms, the TUE committee was a committee of the sports associations. Consequently, any change in the membership of the committee meant that every sports association had to take a decision at board level about the appointment of the members of the TUE committee.
This situation was amended in 2011 with effect from the introduction of the new therapeutic use exemption annex accompanying the NDR. Since then, the TUE committee has been a committee of the Doping Authority.