2021 - 2025 Strategic Plan
UKAD Strategy
UKAD's purpose is to ensure doping-free sport, promoting and protecting clean sport through education, testing and enforcement. Insight into doping and its threat to sport is central to what we do, using an intelligence-led approach to deter and detect wrongdoing.
On broader integrity issues, we share our knowledge and expertise to work with others within sport for the benefit of athletes, those who work with them, and the wider public.
Our 2021 - 2025 Strategic Plan aligns with our mission to protect clean sport, with four new objectives to help guide us.
Download the full Strategic Plan for 2021 - 2025.
We operate within a rules-based regulatory framework so applying these standards is central to what we do. Recognising the importance of education, our focus is on providing the appropriate education, using the right channels and making sure it is relevant and accessible.
We will seek to generate more intelligence reporting from within sports on the doping threat.
How will we achieve this?
1. Working with sports to embed an “Education First” principle
2. Implementing innovative and tailored education programmes
3. Running an intelligence-led testing programme
4. Investigating and prosecuting cheats
5. Encouraging greater reporting of doping intelligence
6. Monitoring compliance against the National Anti-Doping Policy, including through use of the Assurance Framework
To implement the best anti-doping regime for the UK we need to understand the threat doping poses, the changes taking place, and the research that has practical application to what we do and how we do it.
How will we achieve this?
1. Realigning our resources to create a new Insight and Innovation capability
2. Seeking funding for the commission of innovative research projects
3. Harnessing the latest research, insight and knowledge to inform what we do
4. Sharing what we know with sport, government, academia, the public and others for them to understand and act on
5. Producing annual and thematic assessments of the doping threat to sport
6. Stimulating the research agenda for interested partners
7. Using our insight and strategic communication to inform and influence policy regarding clean sport and integrity nationally and internationally
Our responsibilities under the World Anti-Doping Code and our case work experience have highlighted that to take on the most challenging doping investigations we need a broader suite of powers.
Alongside this we will continue to embed an assurance regime, to enable us to assure Department for Culture, Media and Sport and funding bodies of compliance of sports with their anti-doping responsibilities.
How will we achieve this?
1. Securing the appropriate powers we need to improve our ability to investigate cheating
2. Developing a range of strategic partnerships with organisations and sectors which we can collaborate with to gain specialist advice, added value, or business efficiency
3. Developing practical applications of innovative research projects, leading to greater and more effective interventions and influence
4. Reviewing anti-doping assurance statements from sports and responding with support, learning and feedback
Sport is data-rich and open source material adds further context. By harnessing developments in data analytics, greater insight on doping in sport can be acquired and used to better focus our education, testing and intelligence activities.
How will we achieve this?
1. Understanding the data we hold and the information available to us
2. Developing a data use and retention strategy that is proportionate and compliant with our data protection obligations
3. Working with partners, identifying how best to use automation, technology and data analytics to better carry out our mission
4. Preparing a robust business case for the funding to support our data analytic ambitions
5. Using our intellectual property to lead the international thinking on data analytics in anti-doping
