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Swimming New Zealand Website Error Audit

By David

Does Swimming New Zealand pay someone to keep their website up to date? For some months Swimwatch contributors have highlighted obvious errors – the never ending list of swim meets described as our best ever; the world rankings that no one else on the planet recognizes; the novel that Swimming New Zealand called Project Vanguard. For a national sporting organisation the website is in need of serious attention. Here are one or two examples of the sort of thing that needs to be fixed – our website error report.

The HP Governance Committee page continues to list Ross Butler and Helen Norfolk as members of the Committee.

I’m pretty certain last week’s Sunday Star Times reported their resignation. Helen Norfolk went into some detail about why she felt the Committee was not what she expected. All that has clearly missed Swimming New Zealand’s attention.

On the State AquaBlacks’ page Mark Regan is excluded from the list of coaches. He is relegated to the role of Support Staff.

On the High Performance page however he’s back listed as the “HPC Senior Performance Coach”. Someone in his position should really have a settled coaching title.

The same High Performance page lists Jan Cameron as the General Manager of Performance & Pathways. That must be wishful thinking on Mike Byrne’s part. Cameron has been gone for over a month.

The Membership page tells me there are 17 registered clubs in Auckland. A quick check of the Auckland website tells me there are 21 clubs in the region. SNZ says there are 15 clubs in Northland. Northland say they have only 14. SNZ say Waikato has 26 clubs. Waikato’s website lists 23 clubs. Ever loyal Wellington is listed on the SNZ website with 12 clubs when Wellington credits themselves with 14 clubs. I’m sure you get the idea. The club figures on the Membership page are in need of some attention.

It’s not really an error, but I was amused at the membership page’s revelation that SNZ has 25,000 members. The 2011 Annual Report [PDF] confirms that is right – 25,467 to be exact. However the 25,467 includes 7136 learn to swim members that Byrne, Butler and company have spent weeks telling everyone are not really members.

It seems that when Auckland enroll learn to swim members, they don’t count – but when it comes to boasting on the website they are all in the family.

I did notice that there are 15 swimmers listed as 2011 State AquaBlacks. I wondered therefore why only 14 AquaBlack swimmers have biographies included on the website. Dylan Dunlop-Barrett misses the “one team” roll call.

So there are several obvious problems for Byrne and Butler to ponder, alongside the previously-mentioned tradition of exaggerating New Zealand team achievements, such as reporting higher rankings or better race placings. Sometimes, perfectly good results are exaggerated, which really does boggle the mind.

I did notice an announcement today that has not made the pages of Swimming New Zealand’s news. The SPARC and Swimming New Zealand members on the steering committee set up to examine the organisation were announced. SPARC are represented by Peter Miskimmin and Bill Birnie. Swimming New Zealand will be represented by (would you believe it) Ross Butler. About a week ago the Regions appointed Jim Swanson to look after their interests.

I am surprised by the membership of the committee. I never expected Miskimmin to pick up this sort of hot potato. I’ve been to two meetings where Miskimmin has stressed that getting involved in the governance of New Zealand swimming had nothing to do with him or SPARC. Now, here he is, up to his eyeballs in the centre of the whole damn deal.

Well, it is Miskimmin’s to own now. Whatever the result, good or bad, the future of Swimming New Zealand belongs to him. Whatever the outcome, we will hold Miskimmin responsible. We do however start off a little suspicious of guys who say one thing and do another.

I don’t have many thoughts at all on the appointment of Bill Birnie. He’s a pretty standard 1990s high flying financier of the Bay of Island golf course and put options variety. I’m unsure whether that experience equips him to structure an international sport’s organization to win Olympic championships.

The least surprising announcement is Swimming New Zealand’s decision to appoint Ross Butler to the committee. No one else exists in Swimming New Zealand these days – Butler, Butler and Butler Inc. His presence on the committee is ironic given that constitutionally Butler should not even be on the Swimming New Zealand Board. He is an appointed Director and has been on the Swimming New Zealand Board for two years longer than the limit set by Rule 10 of the Swimming New Zealand Constitution. There is no way he should be on this Committee. If the Regions and Jim Swanson were doing their job, Butler’s membership should be challenged. He should be removed from this committee and from the Swimming New Zealand Board. He has no right on either body. We must just wait to see the spin the Swimming New Zealand website puts on his appointment. Given the discomfort Butler’s behavior should cause there may be no announcement. Butler may prefer to keep his assent to committee membership “away from the glare of publicity.” In Butler’s position I’d be trying to avoid attention as well.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 8th, 2011 at 12:28 am and is filed under New Zealand . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Tom

    As someone who has worked in and around websites for some years, I feel the need to stick up for Swimming New Zealand on this one. There’s a difference between deliberately misrepresenting information (which has been discussed on Swimwatch in the past) and out of date content or accidental inconsistencies. Most of what you have identified above falls, I believe, into the latter category.

    Keeping a website up-to-date (particularly a website the size of SNZ’s) is time consuming and incredibly difficult to do when you have other work responsibilities. To be done well, it generally requires someone employed fulltime to keep content fresh and relevant. As far as I can tell, there is no one in that role at SNZ.

    Who knows, perhaps they’ll read this post and fix the mistakes? Or perhaps they’ll keep them, just because it was David who pointed them out.

  • Rob03

    I am wondering if Butler gave his ‘assent’ to committee membership (in his letter of gracious acceptance it sounds like the board ‘prevailed’ upon him to ‘reluctantly’ stand!) or if indeed he has ‘ascended’ to the lofty heights of membership of yet another committee.

    One wonders where SNZ might be without the uber-talented Mr Butler. Independent board member for life it would seem, his fingerprints are all over the wonderful decision making of the past six years (including the appointment of the stunningly talented and successful Mike Byrne, CEO extraordinaire, Jan Cameron, much loved and admired GMPP, to name but a few) and now having taken care of the open, transparent and precise process’ of appointing Mr Waldee as London Campaign manager, he rides to the rescue of the organisation as the boards representative on the steering group to set terms of reference and appoint committee members to the independent SPARC funded review of the sport.

    Ross Butler, ‘Supreme Leader’, ‘Dear Leader’, ‘Fearless Leader’ and ‘the great successor to the revolutionary cause’ – sounds like someone else who was appointed by open and transparent democratic process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-il

  • NSS Parent

    Yes, it is true that it is difficult to always have accurate and up-to-date information on your website. But I would have thought that out of their 24 staff, someone would have that responsibility. Besides, we make allowances with our club website when there are only 2 people running our office (1 full-time, 1 part-time) and we know what a massive job they do. Even our regional office runs on only 1 full-time and 1 part-time person and we have the largest region in the country, so we are inclined to be a little more forgiving. Who knows, maybe Ross Butler will decide he should take charge of the website as well, since he seems to be wanting to control everything else.

  • Sensible Swimming

    David,

    Like you I am surprised a little that Peter Miskimmin wants to own this hot potato. SPARC have their DNA running right through the recent past of SNZ. With Kerry MacDonald (a total disaster) and Nelson Cull having been board advisors for almost a year now and before that very close relationships between SPARC and SNZ HP there is a very high political risk for Miskimmin on this one. If the review works and SNZ is left in a better position then he may recover some credit (for most of us it will be too little too late.) If the review is judged less than successful then he crashes and burns. Time will tell whether it is his greatest folly or grandest moment. Either way, it may end up defining his career as SPARC CEO.

    What interests me is how, with the now obvious shortcomings of the HP Governance committee, SPARC has been able to continue with a line of satisfaction over SNZ performance.

    We hear reports that SPARC are satisfied with the progress SNZ is making with the implementation of Ineson’s recommendations and yet we know that SNZ does not really believe that those recommendations were good. Ineson identified the CEO’s culpability and yet he is still effectively making all decisions relating to the operation of HP programmes and has gone on record that he does not agree with Ineson’s conclusions or methodology.

    The HPGC is clearly in trouble as evidenced by Helen Norfolk’s resignation and the reported resignation of another (Ross Butler?) and it seems as though they (SNZ) lurch from one crisis to another.

    I am glad that our top swimmers continue to have support, albeit imperfect through your favourite Millenium Institute. I can’t help wondering about the obvious and ongoing discord between the rhetoric of SPARC and the performance of SNZ. When will they have had enough and demand what we all know is required – that is a new CEO and Board. Until then we simply will not move forward with any credibility.

    As in every area of life and business it is the leadership which sets the tone and nature of the organisation. If SNZ was well led with a quality Board and an outstanding CEO we would not be where we are today. That is simple. Make quality replacements in those key areas and we move forward with better decisions. That does not require a review to draw that conclusion. It may not be Management 101, but it is certainly no higher than Management 201!

    Lets just get on with it. Bite the bullet, remove Mike Byrne, Ross Butler and their cronies and we have a chance of a decent future. Fail to do that and we do not. Obviously Miskimmin, ever the bureaucrat/politician does not want to make that call without the support of a full Independent review, but how much pain do we all suffer in the interim?

    If the regional coalition has given away their short term gain to secure a better future as reported here:

    ( “While there will be no grand and immediate result such as the wholesale resignation or forcible removal of the Board, we believe that the process that has been initiated will bring constructive changes that will benefit generations of swimmers to come. We’re looking beyond our need for immediate gratification and playing for the long term.” : http://www.akswim.co.nz/site/auckswim/files/General%20Info/2011/Letter%20-%20Information%20to%20Auckland%20swimmers%20and%20clubs%20re.%20SNZ%20review.pdf )

    then Peter Miskimmin, please do not fail our sport again with weak and indecisive decision making and uncertain messages.

    To the regional coalition, whatever else you may have forfeited do not give up your collective voting power – you have shown with your appointment of Jim Swanson why SNZ fears that more than anything else.