A new licence system premiered
4 september, 2009 15:00 | Pierre Thullberg
Today, Friday, the Swedish Fencing Federation launched its new IT-system for licences. payment by card, obtainment of licence within an hour, simplified registration for competitions, and improved functionality at fencing.se are the main news for the Swedish fencers. At the same time, the system leads to higher efficiency and decreased work load at the National Office and for competition organizers.
The new licence system is integrated with the old member/user system at fencing.se, based on the idea that Swedish fencing should have a common information hub. It is therefore useful if everyone in Swedish fencing become members of fencing.se, including those who dod not compete and therefoe do not need a competitive licence. Club and district administrators need to become members of fencing.se in order to be able to use the the registration system Ophardt online.
Christian Edling, treasurer of the SvFF, has been part of the project guideline definition.
– It is never easy to define an IT project, and to decide what one wants to have, and what to forgo. This time, we have chosen to prioritize what we assess to be the greatest need among clubs and individual fencers in the country: to lessen the administrative burden of licence processing, competition registration, leadership of competitions, ranking lists, and some other things. Every season, hundreds of hours of non-paid labor is spent on manual administration which can be replaced by an IT-solution.
The National office leader of the Swedish Fencing Federation, Monica Gårdström, also hopes that the system will lead to improvements which will be appreciated by fencers and organizers.
– I think that the possibility to pay by card and to get one´s Swedish competive licence right away is very appreciated. The application time for FIE-licences will also be shortened. At the same time, it will still be possible to apply for a competitive licence via email or ordinary bank payment order for those who still wish to do so.
For clubs that pay for many licences at one time for their members this is possibly still the best alternative.
Monica is also has high hopes for simplifications concerning administration of competitions.
– In paralell with the new licence system, tests are started on Ophardt Online, a competition management system, which is being integrated with the licence system. By using Ophardt Online, the person responsible for competition registrations in each club can register his fencers for competitions online. The competition organizer will the download the registrations in a file which is directly read by the competition program (for example EnGarde). After the competition, a results file will be uploaded, from which results lists for publication and updated ranking lists will be produced.
The competition registration system will at first be tested in the St. Erik Cup, with the first competition on September 19th. It will be made available, on a non-mandatory basis, for all Swedish competitions which require competitive licences.
Benefits of the new system:
- payment by card for all competitive licences, both Swedish and FIE
Licences will be valid immediately upon ordering
It is simpler for fencers to check licences, and the validity
Improved functionality for members of fencing.se
Online registrations for competitions
Clubs will get a better grip of the competitive activity of their members
Manual checking of licence validity will become unnecessary
Simpler routines at competitions, and for updating of ranking lists.
All new systems have teething problems, but we will do our outmost to make everything run as smoothly as possible.
Originally Posted by Pierre Thullberg
