[ASA] Reminder: Decadal Plan - Call for Submissions from National and Institutional-scale Facilities

[John O'Byrne]

Dear colleagues,

On 12 March 2014 the Decadal Plan Working Group 2.2. (for National and Institutional-scale Facilities) placed the following call for submissions with a deadline set for 30 April 2014. 

Thank you to everyone who has submitted reports already. The reports will be uploaded over the coming days to the Working Group website: 
https://sites.google.com/site/australiandecadalplanwg22/ 

The working group will continue to accept reports over the next few weeks.  Please contact me directly to discuss this further. 

Kind regards,
Kate Brooks
Chair WG2.2 

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To Directors of National and Institutional-scale Astronomy Facilities 

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chair of the Decadal Plan Working Group 2.2. for National and Institutional-scale Facilities. 

On behalf of the Working Group members I invite you to submit a written report on your facility before 30 April 2014. Your submission will provide valuable input to the report that our Working Group must compile by August 2014.

I also give you the opportunity to make a short (5 min) presentation at one or more of the upcoming Town Hall meetings. 

Working Group 2.2 Terms of Reference 

As established by the National Committee for Astronomy, the Working Group report must:

1. Report on progress against objectives of the previous Decadal Plan.

2. Provide a stock take of current or future proposed capabilities/resources in the area.

3. Identifies any new national or international opportunities/requirements in the area over the period 2016-25. 

4. Suggests strategies and the resourcing levels required to maximise these new opportunities. 

We are using the same process for the 2005-2015 Decadal Plan process, whereby each facility submits a written report. The reports are collated and a summary report written by the Working Group.  There were some 20+ reports received last time. 

Instructions for written submissions:

Your written submission should be no more than 3 pages in length and provide information under the following sub-headings:

I. Status Update 

II. Capabilities 

III. Funding Arrangements for next 10 years 

IV. Operational arrangements (including community access) 

V. High Profile Work done by the Facility (checked against Decadal Plan Key Science Goals)

VI. Immediate Future of the Facility

VII. Future Vision of Facility

As part of the section "Status Update", you should make reference to the priorities noted in the 2005 submitted Facility reports (attached for your reference). 

The funding information should be brief and is in no way binding. The preferred format is the Estimated cost projections (broken down into Capital Expenditure and Operational Expenditure) for 1-3 years, 4-6 years and 7+ years with some indication about the status of the future funding  (i.e. Not funded, funding applied for, not funded yet or contingent on other developments). 

We will leave it to you to determine how you want to flag the high profile work done by your facility over the past decade (e.g. Impact factor, media release, state-of-the art instrument development, official openings). The information provided at this time need only be a set of 3-4 bullet points. This may be expanded upon later to use for "pop-up" boxes in the final Decadal Plan publication. It would be useful to check the high-profile work you list against the Key Science Goals of the 2005-15 Decadal Plan. 

Please note that all submissions will be preserved electronically and released publicly. 

Note also that the information provided in the submissions will be used by the Working Group and the Editorial Board to prioritise the facilities in some way in order to arrive at a final set of key recommendations for future resourcing. 


Town Hall Presentations

A series of four Town Hall meeting will be taking place over the next 3 weeks that are relevant for this discussion: 

Mar 25: Sydney Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4  (W2.2 Chair Michael Burton) 

(location: CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Contact: Sarah Pearce

Mar 26: Melbourne  Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4 (W2.2 Chair Kate Brooks)

(location: Swinburne University VR Theatre,  Contact: Karl Glazebrook)

Mar 27: Canberra  Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4 (W2.2 Chair Andrew Hopkins) 

 (location: ANU,  Contact: Martin Asplund)

Apr 3: Perth Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4  (W2.2 Chair Steve Tingay) 

(location: UWA ICRAR,  Contact: Lister Staveley-Smith)

At each of these meetings there will be a short presentation from the Working Group on National and Institutional-scale Facilities (the slides will be distributed ahead of the meeting, early next week). In addition some time has been set aside for presentations from the facilities themselves. This is an excellent way for the facilities to share their future vision and flag any discussion points.

We already have confirmed presentations from AAO, ATNF, ANU, MWA and Antarctica. If you would like to make a short (5 min) presentation at one or more of the Town Halls then please contact me as soon as possible. 

Please call me if you have any queries about the submission process. 

Further information about the Working Group 2.2 is available at: 

https://sites.google.com/site/australiandecadalplanwg22/ 

We will be adding more information on this site over the next few days so please check back to get our working list of the National and Institutional-Scale facilities. 

Kind regards, 

Kate Brooks 


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