1. Centralized id & permissions system

Centralized id & permissions system

This boils down to a single database with a unique ID for every entity who was or is associated with FAI.

Once this is established, each ID can be assigned an unlimited number of attributes.

What is an entity?

It is something unique. A person is an entity, but so is a NAC or a committee or a record, and they all have different attributes.

Example entities

Person
Nation
Sporting licence
Committee (Eg EB, ASC, ASC subcommittee or WG, TC, Expert group Etc.)
Championship or competition
FAI Class and sub-class
Record
Calendar item
Etc.

Entities often refer to other entities, a person may have a sporting licence, be a member of a number of committees and hold (or have held) a number of records. A committee will contain a number of people and have a calendar of meetings. A championship will have a calendar item and contain a number of people possibly in different FAI Classes Etc.

Examples of entity attributes

A 'person' entity's attributes include:

Personal information: Name, name in native script, Nation, Address, email, photo, personal CV Etc. Etc.
Positions held: in FAI, NAC, championship organizations Etc.
Access permissions: to FAI groups, email lists, editorial on main FAI website, raw data Etc. Etc.
Sporting licence
Records
Competition entries
Results: Championship & ranking
anything else connected with people associated with FAI

A Nation entity's attributes include:

Nation name (long & short) Country codes (FAI/IOC and ISO 2 & 3)
FAI Status; Active, Temporary, not a member Etc.
NAC name and contact information
NAC Personnel, (president, General Secreatary Etc) = person entities.
NAC Subscription information

A 'Committee' entity's attributes include:

Its name and function
Its parent (FAI, ASC, TC Etc)
Personnel, (president, VPs, delegates, members, secretary Etc) = person entities.

Importance

Absolutely vital

Why?

There are a vast number of entities associated with FAI, in turn they each have a vast number of attributes. Joining them all together under a single ID allows for easier management (eg only one spelling of a name), easier use (people will learn their own id) and allows the data to be leveraged in ways which add value (eg display records held by entrants to championships, success in championships by record holders Etc.)

How?

Is a simple one (id) to many (attributes) relationship. Could be a bespoke database, or could leverage one of the multitude of applications out there designed for exactly this purpose ranging from the generic like Active Directory or LDAP to more specialized applications like Atlassian Crowd Etc.

When?

Immediately.

Cost?

There are plenty of open source softwares out there which do this.
Since this is probably the most common problem encountered by any systems developer, it should not be difficult to find someone within the group who might be able to set up a system and combine existing FAI data into it.
If not, then a detailed spec. should be written by the group for suitable software developer companies to tender for, the group must be involved in the selection of the winning bid.