Committees are the engine of the Association, providing the membership with the means to make decisions about everything from rules changes to championship sites to scholarship recipients.

But that engine has a lot of moving parts, says the administrator who is supervising a staff study of the committee structure as part of an NCAA Executive Committee review of national office operations.

"When I was first handed this project, I wanted to get my hands around what it is that we're actually talking about," said Bernard Franklin, NCAA senior vice-president for governance and membership services. "That's when I began to try to get a compilation of all the committees -- their size, frequency of meetings, the number of staff assigned as liaisons to the committees -- and I found a number of interesting things."

Perhaps the most interesting things are the numbers:

• There are about 180 councils, cabinets, committees, subcommittees, task forces and ad hoc groups (the number varies as task forces or other temporary groups are created and then complete their work).

• There are about 1,600 positions on those committees, filled by representatives of member institutions and conferences.

• About 290 staff liaison positions provide committee support.

"That's a lot of moving parts that we are managing and leading on a day-to-day basis," Franklin said.

The study of the committee structure, authorized during the Executive Committee's April meeting, seeks to accurately catalogue those parts, examine how committees operate, and evaluate how to improve the efficiency of those operations.

Just counting committees has been challenging, because various segments of the national office staff are responsible for their administration.

Most -- but not all -- are tracked by the NCAA's committee coordinator, Sharon Tufano.

Those include nearly all of 126 Association-wide and division committees that exist under NCAA legislation and thus are considered "standing" committees (including the new Division I Committee on Academic Performance).

There are about 1,250 positions linked to those committees. That means nearly a quarter of those 1,600 total positions in the structure are tied to more than 50 other panels that were not specifically created by legislation.

Those groups include subcommittees, which by definition are populated by members of parent committees; but they also include ad hoc, advisory or task-focused groups, including a few that have operated for years.

As committee coordinator, Tufano keeps closer tabs than any other staff member on the Association's committees. But even she can't answer all of the questions she receives from the membership and elsewhere about who is serving on committees -- especially subcommittees.

"That's an area where we're not in the loop; we don't really know what subcommittees exist, we don't know who the members are and we don't know the terms of anyone serving," she said.

Yet that knowledge might be important in any effort to make committee operations more efficient, because subcommittees regularly meet separately from their parent committees, either in person or by telephone -- a fact that has both managerial and budgetary implications.

Tallying committees and members -- as well as compiling even less easily discovered information such as frequency, locations, lengths and cost of meetings -- are the logical starting point for an effort that, among other things, seeks to help accomplish Goal No. 4 of the recently adopted NCAA strategic plan: "The national office will be operated in an accountable, effective and efficient manner."

"This review process really feeds into that goal area," Franklin said. "It's just one aspect of what we need to look at as we consider how to better serve our membership. If there is a way to better serve our membership through improvement of the committee structure, then we should be doing that."

For that reason, Franklin says, it is reasonable to expect at least some changes to result from the current review.

"We're probably going to get a more centralized committee coordinating function out of this," he said. "We need better tracking in terms of what it costs us to operate a rather large and elaborate committee structure. I think we're going to get a more centralized training process for Association-wide committee liaisons. These are the minimums."

Membership role

Whether the study will result in broader changes -- such as reductions in the number of committees or frequency of meetings -- likely is up to the NCAA membership.

A significant portion of the membership will be asked for input into those and other questions via a survey that will be sent to every member of every NCAA committee within the next four to six weeks.

The survey will solicit information and opinions about committee composition, operations, staffing needs and how efficiently members' time is being used in the structure, as well as ask about such things as members' willingness to experiment with meeting alternatives, such as telephone and video conferences.

Franklin said survey responses will be supplemented with telephone interviews with selected conference commissioners and athletics administrators, to obtain an "in-depth perspective about the committee structure and their recommendations for change."

It's possible, he acknowledges, the consensus may be that the structure works fine as it is.

"Certainly, we'd have to be respectful of that. But we have to ask the question. That's what we're attempting to do, to ask the question, and to see if we can improve -- and to get committee input."

On the other hand, survey and interview participants may point to areas where supervision by committees no longer is needed or where consolidation of committees to reduce duplication of efforts is appropriate. Or, they may point to lesser changes, such as reductions in the frequency of meetings or size of committees.

"The real experts who can respond to that type of question are the current committee members, because they do the work of the committees," Franklin said. "I don't think those are questions, quite honestly, that staff can fairly answer, nor should we -- I don't know the work of 180-plus committees."

Staff liaison training

There is, however, an area of the study that vitally involves staff: ensuring liaisons are properly prepared to efficiently support committees.

Currently, there is no formal preparation of staff liaisons for committee work. Most learn the liaison role by actually working with committees -- usually as a secondary liaison working with more experienced staff, although some liaisons assume primary roles without previous experience.

The survey of committee members will seek feedback on liaisons' effectiveness in their roles, as well as suggestions for training needs.

"I haven't sensed a problem," Franklin says about staff liaisons' work with committees. "I've sensed that perhaps there is a need, expressed by some staff and by some committees, for training."

One objective of the review is to achieve greater efficiency in the committee structure. Consistency in administration of committees can help in achieving that goal.

"The staff liaisons do a tremendous job," Franklin said. "What we want to be able to do is provide them with a set of skills and tools that are consistent and applicable across the Association, so that you don't get this committee that does things a certain kind of way, and another committee doing things that way. They may be functioning, and functioning well, but do we want to have inconsistent processes?"

That and other questions will be addressed in the coming months, as the study continues through its information-gathering period.

Franklin emphasizes that there will be no recommendations for change until input has been received from committee members and other appropriate segments of the membership, and that input has been thoroughly reviewed.

"We're going to compile all of this information and report the findings, we hope, by the (2005) Convention to all of our presidential and Management Council bodies," he said. "We'll be sharing findings; we won't be making any recommendations at that time."