Brennan: IT message is getting through
His smile had nothing to do with the International Rules result the previous Friday evening. No, the former GAA president had been able to get his fill of Gaelic games in the early hours.
Thanks to the wonders of wi-fi, Brennan logged onto the TG4 website on his notebook to watch live coverage of the Kerry county final between Dr Crokes and Mid-Kerry.
Not satisfied with that, he opened another window and tuned into KCLR’s radio stream of his own Kilkenny county final replay featuring James Stephens and Ballyhale Shamrocks while muting the TV commentary from Killarney.
Information technology has always been of huge interest to Brennan and he enthusiastically accepted the chairman’s role of the GAA IT and communications committee after stepping down as president in 2009.
Working alongside the GAA’s IT manager Declan Fanning and the rest of the committee, the brief has been expansive as the association acknowledged it was playing a game of catch-up in the area.
The deal with Google two years ago was a major step in the right direction. Thanks to it, among other things clubs are now able to develop and update websites via a simple template.
But the GAA are now getting to a stage where they are confident the communication channels between the units are stronger.
Just this past week, officials have been taking online training courses in the GAA’s fixtures and results system with direction over the phone as well as a questions and answers session. And all from the comfort of their own home.
At national and county level, referees are now instructed to transmit the results of the games they are officiating via their phones.
“Right now, more than half the counties are on that GAA management system,” says Brennan. “The plan is that this year and next year at the very latest all of the counties will be on the system. The association will use a common system to manage its fixtures and results. When we’ve everybody on that we will be able to know how many games a club played, when they’ve played them so you can now have real data about how many matches clubs are getting.
“Armed with that information, you can plan activities a lot better. You’re no longer putting a thumb in the air and saying a club has played so many matches, you can actually record what happened.
“We’re all hearing about club games being crammed into certain parts of the year. Now we have the real evidence and it means that fixtures planners in counties and county officers can take that information and see if they can change the way they run their fixtures.
“It also means at provincial and national level counties can be given direction if it’s felt they have been sloppy in the way they’ve run some of their competitions.”
From the data retrieved, other areas such as games development can ascertain what trends are being followed in terms of scores and whether competitions are structured well enough to be conducive to improving Gaelic games in counties.
At the end of March the system will be updated to record match bans at inter-county level.
“Tracking historical misdemeanours of players can be very tricky in an annual operation,” Brennan points out. “When you have that in an IT system it obviously makes it easier to manage the process. Our IT systems in general are updating to reflect rules changes as well.”
The other area of the management system relates to building the membership database from which the GAA can extrapolate profiles of their clubs in matters like insurance.
But, as Brennan explains, the process of discovering exactly who is a member of the GAA is also being done to give something back to the grassroots.
“It’s very important for the association to know what members it has, where they are and what not.
“The next phase of that whole area will be something Peter McKenna in his new role as stadium and commercial director will be looking so as to know how to offer more value to our supporters in terms of access to the stadium etc.
“There’s a lot more you can build around a membership card now. Many organisations have membership cards which entitle them to various facilities and opportunities with retailers.
“I know that as part of the commercial roll-out the membership will be an important element of that and give more value to people being members of the association.
“You should be able to get more from a membership card than knowing you’re a member of the GAA from both the association and maybe other bodies as well.”
In the first quarter of this year, the GAA will extend its e-learning programme to coaching where people can go through online courses from home.
“Obviously, coaching programmes are delivered out on the field but it will also include video footage within the programme and it will be a self-examination as well and access how much they have learned from the programme.
“Yes, you have to go out and deliver on the field after that but there are some things you can do online.
“That adds all sorts of possibilities down the line. It can be for coaching, it can be for administration people, it can be for all sorts of reasons. It’s quite innovative for the GAA to use.”
Among the GAA’s other IT developments include a system to better manage how coaches and development personnel spend their time and the introduction of a club financial mechanism to help them deal with their accounts.
In the meantime, the GAA’s central financial system and ticketing organisation continue to be updated, the establishment of the tickets.ie website last year a step in making the association more self-sufficient in that area.
“We’re like any other business,” insists Brennan. “We need to deliver standards to our members and to our patrons and to do that we have to be up with the times.”
SIGNED in early 2010, the GAA’s deal with Google is described as a “ground-breaking arrangement” by Nickey Brennan.
Although the agreement is much more than just GMail, the association has approximately 12,000 email accounts with the multi-national giant, all carrying the gaa.ie domain. Not all of the accounts are active but they areavailable to the GAA for all officers at provincial level as well as key individuals at county and club level.
“In excess of 98% of them wouldn’t be in anybody’s name,” explains Brennan. “The user name is the position they’re in. Our relationship with Google has enabled the communications process to improve significantly and probably was the fundamental thing for us. It also was the thing the GAA was being criticised for in the past perhaps with justification in that it wasn’t getting information around the association.”
UP until a few years ago, the GAA’s official website, gaa.ie, had come in for heavy criticism. Under-developed and obsolete, it was an eyesore for the Association but has since been transformed into a rich source of information ranging from rules to the ‘Round The Square’ championship magazine show. The most visited section of the site in 2011 was the fixtures page.
“During the championship, there would be massive uploading on the Monday afternoon to see fixtures,” says Nickey Brennan. “We would see a big trend there. “We have a way of analysing traffic on the website. The GAA website is being accessed from every corner of the globe and reflects just how many Irish are living abroad. There’s a lot more we want to do especially in terms of historical information.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
