ITF

The Information & Communication (ICT) Department is responsible for providing a wide range of different services to support and enhance all areas of ITF operations whether these are internally or externally focussed. We strive to maintain a world- class technology infrastructure to ensure that we can continue to help the organisation to manage and exploit its data, improve business process efficiency, and communicate effectively. One of our primary tasks is the ongoing development across our wide range of websites and internet-based services. As the available technologies rapidly become more advanced, this allows us to process, manipulate, and present information more effectively – as well as offering new ways for us to engage more directly with an increasingly diverse audience. The launch of the "Show Your Colours" campaign provided the opportunity for us to implement a major refresh to the design of the official Davis Cup and Fed Cup websites. There was a particular focus on improving the user experience across all forms of mobile devices as well as enhancing interactivity and social media engagement. The new match centre, live blogs, and social media wall, together with a completely redesigned live scoreboard proved very popular and contributed to record traffic to the Davis Cup website in 2014 including a 30 per cent increase in visits. The ITF's main website, itftennis.com, also continued to grow strongly during the year with the new ITF Pro Circuit live scoring service helping to drive the number of website visits to over 26 million (a rise of 30 per cent over the previous year). To support such rapid growth, we have been careful to invest time and resources to upgrade many of our core web FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION: INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY 29 INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY hosting and data management systems this year. This will ensure that the performance, availability, and security of our services keeps pace with the increasing demands put upon them and that they remain able to scale up as we continue to develop. Our Officiating and National Associations Portals also received major enhancements in 2014 with the development of new services to allow the online management of ITF Officiating Schools. National associations now have the ability to register their officials so that they can access the Officiating Portal and register online for ITF schools. These new automated systems should reduce much of the current manual administrative overhead connected with schools management, saving the ITF Officiating Department a considerable amount of time, while also increasing the efficiency and visibility of this important activity for national associations. 26 MILLION VISITS TO ITFTENNIS.COM IN 2014

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