Board of Management
The Doping Authority has a board with three members: a chair, a secretary and a treasurer. The secretary is nominated by the NOC*NSF, and the treasurer is nominated by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. For an overview of the board members at the end of the year under review the reader is referred to Annex 2.
The board delegates the responsibility for day-to-day matters, and for policy preparation and implementation, to the CEO. 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 2016, 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 decided to appoint a regular deputy who can, when required, take over from the regular Advisory Board member on behalf of the Athletes Committee. 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
During the year under review, the Doping Authority had three departments (Prevention, Enforcement & Investigation and Support), and a legal officer. The three department heads and the legal officer constitute, together with the CEO, the Management Team. One extra person (a documentalist) has been added to the staff temporarily for the implementation of projects financed separately. In addition, another member of staff was appointed at the Enforcement & Investigations department given the expansion of the national doping control programme.
At year-end 2016, the office organisation comprised 19 people and 15.9 FTEs. For an overview, the reader is referred to Annex 3.
Doping Control Officials (DCOs)
In addition to the permanent staff, there were 19 part-time Doping Control Officials at the end of 2016 (eleven men and eight women, see Annex 4), who were appointed under 'minimum hours' contracts.
Quality
Quality is of paramount importance in anti-doping policy. 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. In September 2013, our organisation acquired a new ISO 9001:2008 certificate, which is valid for three years. This certification expired in September 2016 and it was decided not to apply for a new certificate given the planned establishment of the Doping Authority as an independent governing body (which is expected on 1 January 2018). ISO certification will be addressed after the independent governing body has been established. A Complaints Procedure was adopted and published on the website in May 2011. No complaints were processed using this procedure in 2016.
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 ten independent doctors. The TUE committee works in two sub-committees that do the same work for two different groups of sports associations. The committee met in November 2016 for regular consultations.
TUE appeals committee
Athletes who disagree with decisions made by the TUE committee can appeal to the TUE Appeals Committee, which was established in 2016. The TUE Appeals Committee consists of three people. The committee was not required to take any action at all in 2016.
Compliance with Doping Sanctions Committee (CND)
The World Anti-Doping Code requires the Doping Authority to monitor the implementation of sanctions imposed for doping. If there is any failure to comply with a sanction correctly, the same sanction begins again after the end of the original sanction. The Compliance with Doping Sanctions Committee is responsible for determining whether there has been correct compliance with a sanction and whether there are any reasons to reduce a subsequent sanction.