The Council of Europe and UKAD launch new tool to generate greater insights into anti-doping efforts across Europe

The Council of Europe and UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) are delighted to announce the launch of the new Anti-Doping Questionnaire Dynamic Dashboards. This will allow anti-doping bodies to track and compare data across countries and over the years, to build a more comprehensive picture of changing trends and issues more easily.  

Leveraging data analytics, the new Dashboards will help everyone interested in anti-doping in sport to gain valuable insights and study the situation in countries across Europe and beyond. 

The data comes from the annual Anti-Doping Questionnaire (ADQ), which is used by the Council of Europe to monitor anti-doping efforts across its member states. The ADQ gathers information on a wide range of topics, including anti-doping testing, monitoring, prevention, education, legal details, and budgets.  

Until recently, the ADQ database has been underutilised as data was primarily available in PDF documents, which made comparative analysis challenging. This initiative has seen the ADQ data transferred to Microsoft Power BI, transforming it into a more dynamic tool, providing deeper insights to help facilitate better-informed decision-making. 

Tony Josiah, UKAD’s Director of Education, Insight and Global Engagement, said: 

“This has been an exciting project for UKAD to work on with the Council of Europe. Together we have created interactive dashboards that offer a comprehensive and visually engaging way to analyse and present the information gathered from the annual ADQ.  

“To get to this stage has involved months of data extraction, transformation, and visualisation, ensuring that the final product is both informative and user-friendly. Leveraging data analytics to enhance our insight on the threats to clean sport is part of our Strategic Refresh 2024-26, and these dashboards are one of the ways in which we are furthering this commitment and supporting the wider anti-doping community.” 

The ADQ Dynamic Dashboards aim to improve policy development and evaluation, compliance monitoring as well as research and analysis into anti-doping in sports. 

By adding future datasets, the Dashboards can be used to conduct longitudinal studies, tracking changes and trends in anti-doping efforts over time.  

Jamie Brown, Head of the Council of Europe’s Anti-Doping Unit added: “The Council of Europe's Anti-Doping Questionnaire (ADQ) provides essential data on our member States' anti-doping measures, but the previous form was not easy to properly compare and analyse. These new Dashboards are a major step forward in promoting open access to key data, which will foster transparency and promote the sharing of good practices. This will help our key partners and stakeholders in Europe and beyond to enhance the effectiveness of their anti-doping programmes, as well as strengthen international cooperation.” 

The new ADQ Dynamic Dashboards can be accessed here. 

Notes 

Since the adoption of the Anti-Doping Convention in 1989, the Council of Europe has been instrumental in establishing and improving national anti-doping systems while also facilitating international cooperation. The Monitoring Group of the Anti-Doping Convention (T-DO) plays a crucial role in overseeing the implementation of the Convention, collaborating with international stakeholders, including the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), International Olympic Committee (IOC), and various national anti-doping organizations.