In a unique collaboration, four regional sports trusts (RST) have joined to work together by co-employing a strategic data analyst, who will work across all regions.

Sport Bay of Plenty, Sport Gisborne, Sport Hawke's Bay and Sport Waikato have identified with the changing environment of sport and recreation, there is much more information and data available to help support them in developing their strategy and game plan.

Representatives from the four regional sports trusts.

'There is opportunity to develop a far deeper understanding of regional trends and how we must adjust and adapt our services to meet these trends and potential demands,” says Sport Hawke's Bay spokesperson Colin Stone.

'By sharing the load across four RST's we have an effective and cost effective model that will add value to Sport New Zealand's investment and also enable access to specific data sets and information that, in the past, we simply have not had the capacity to deal with and condense. '

New analyst, Chloe Petterson from Tauranga, is enjoying the opportunity to work collaboratively across geography and different structures.

'My job is to filter out and make sense of the available information in an effort to ensure as a collective of RST's, we are making good decisions regarding strategy based on solid information.

'The four CEO's have agreed on the top five priorities, and also share a desire to know more about the people in the regions, what sports and activities they are participating in, and how programmes can be tailored to meet funder expectations and community outcomes.”

The outcome will make sense of the piles of data, statistics and reports being generated which will give decision-makers information that is impactful and easily understood.

It will also allow these four progressive RST's to keep ahead of trends so that sport and recreation efforts meet the market needs.

Sport NZ also agree that this approach makes a lot of sense and Sport NZ relationship manager Dave Knowles is pleased with the approach.

'It's great to see the self-determination by the RST's and the collaboration which will help unpack the data, to simplify it for themselves as well as their stakeholders.”