FISA, ATHOC and IOC meet to Establish Information Requirements for Athens

Members of FISA, ATHOC (Athens 2004 Organising Committee for the Olympic Games) and the IOC met this week in a two and a half day meeting in Montreux, Switzerland to discuss the Olympic Results and Information Services Requirements (ORIS) in preparation for the 2004 summer Games.

The aim of this meeting was to establish all the information requirements for the official Olympic results and information system, which will be accessible across the whole of the Olympic site during the 2004 Games in Athens.

End-users of this system include journalists, athletes, sponsors, and members of the general public. The system will feature information about the Olympic site and venues, about each sport and its federation, as well as athlete biographies, past results, live scoring during each event, schedules by day and by sport, etc.

Since Sydney, ORIS has met with experts from each International Federation to establish the particular needs for each sport following the experience of the 2000 Olympic Games. This will result in a comprehensive system providing all the relevant information from each sport to every end user.

In 1993, FISA was part of the IOC pilot project INFOTECH whose aim was to define minimum requirements for Information Technology support at the Olympic events. During this project, FISA worked together with representatives of major World News Press Agencies and several large sports newspapers to analyse, in detail, what the information requirements where.

Since then, the project has evolved and includes all the sports involved in the Olympic Games. The aim of ORIS now is to consolidate the information requirements of the International Federations and the Media as a permanent future reference while keeping up with new information delivery standards.

The next Rowing ORIS meeting will take place in Athens early next year.