- Carl Goodwin and Gordon Tribble made the introductions. -- The meeting agenda was reviewed and
amended; the goals were established for this meeting. Expectations and concerns were brainstormed.
- CPAC should drive issues. Driving issues include being proactive and reviewing emerging technology.
- CPAC needs to be productive and effective.
Updates on NATWeb needed.
- What does the General Public want and need?
- Data Archival CPAC Action Items. Closure on pending CPAC issues need to be realized soon.
- Publishing.
- Office of Information (OI) changes were reported; detailing the roles and responsibilities within the OI.
- Lew Wade has accepted a position at CDC starting on November 7.
This discussion is not based on anything with the Water Resources Division, which is the best
government organization that he has ever witnessed. And is at the heart of what the USGS is.
Demonstrable relevance is evident from the underwriting of the projects. WRD does things in a
common way.
Steve Blanchard will be the new ACH/I which is a tribute to the important work that we perform
in the WRD. Bob Hirsch has asked Steve Hammond and Katherine Lins to assist in the OI leadership.
Katherine will oversee the OI geospatial functions and Steve Hammond will oversee the IT functions.
AIS, OIH, two Reimbursable Program personnel, Technical Support including HIF, OFA, and non-standard
agreements are joining the Office of Information from the ACH/Operations.
This team will be an excellent triumvirate to lead.
GIO: Karen Siderelis was offered the job last Friday. And will accept the position early
this week, starting with a remote office in North Carolina and come to Reston full time in a few
months. Her expectation is to comment on the IT/IM functions and will help decide who would be
selected to do these functions.
Bureauwide IT/IM reorganization will be much slower because of the slowness of the Admin reorganization.
The plea from Lew Wade to slow down the IT/IM reorg was accepted. The first wave will be at Christmas
or after Christman. The second wave to include reports functions will be after that.
Distributed WRD employees to include a commitment will be kept together and committed to the
WRD functions. This will be a fight to ensure that this happens. The water will be choppy and
the road will be difficult.
- Questions to Lew Wade:
Who will be taking Lew's place on the Bureau reorg IT/IM committee? Lew's first recommendation
is Steve Blanchard and the second is Katherine Lins.
Any advice on how to communicate with Karen Siderelis? Lew's advice is to continue to reiterate
to Karen that WRD has a lot to offer the USGS in the IT arena. Lew has offered to spend another
day with Karen Siderelis. Karen needs to hear a consistent story about WRD and Karen should know
who to come to talk to when the going gets rough.
Any advice to get other Divisions to join CPAC in IT/IM functions? Other divisions seem to be
preoccupied right now with their own reorganizational issues.
OI Organization Chart? Steve Hammond brought an organization chart to this meeting and shared the
chart with the CPAC. This will not be posted in the minutes of this meeting. This chart includes
units are absorbed from Cathy Hill's shop.
Future of CPAC a year down the road? What effect does the USGS reorganization have on CPAC?
We will see. There has been general Bureau paranoia about Division committees - this seems to be
relaxing a bit in the last few weeks. The real question is how to maintain focus (field service)
when the Bureau functions and charters are broadening. This is the challenge.
- One Last though from Lew Wade
Finally, Lew Wade gives his special thanks to Carl Goodwin for his focus and subtle approach and
Bill Carswell for his strategic CPAC work. And special thanks to Scott McEwen for his enthusiasm.
And also a special thanks to Charlie Merk for stepping forward in his service to CPAC.
- After the After the Break, the District Chief gave a briefing on the general district topics.
- Leonora Fukuda, Hawaii District Site Administrator, presented an overview of the Hawaii District
Computer Section Staff and functions. The overview included ... put major points from the top
line of each powerpoint slide here, such as . servers, desktops, .,.field office issues,
(Leo's Powerpoint slides go here)
Extra clarifications to Leonora's powerpoint slides:
- 25 licenses on WRD Citrix server
- Lotus notes on the Big Island
- 2 Dell 600 GX100 were underpowered
Greg noted that he and Nelson were overruled at the last CPAC meeting regarding the decision to
buy these units for the Districts. Leonora reused the memory. Field Offices are the other offices
on the other islands in the State of Hawaii. Remote Field Offices are ones in Micronesia. Two LAN
jumps for getting Email is slooooooooooow. Replication on the desktops in the District helps a little.
Before the T1, the network could not support email, attachments, exporting large GIS coverages, etc.
T1 connects District Office and Maui. T1 connects Maui Center and the Big Island where the Lotus
Notes Server resides.
- Question about head counts:
- Total employees - 42 FTE
- Number of names - about 50 - 55 personnel
- Some are Contractors, students, seasonal employees, university personnel, etc.
- Question about portable computers:
- About 6 - 7 laptops in the District -- stuck to the Dell laptops.
- Uses Kermit with the palmtops - in Maui
- Gordon Tribble, Hawaii District Chief, presented an overview of the Water-Resource Issues and
Challenges. The insert Gordon's presentation there
included topics such as:
- Water-resource Issues in the Pacific
- Ground-Water Availability
- Climate Stations for Estimating Evapotranspiration, American Samoa
- Quantity and Variability of Streamflow
--Independently evolved fauna exist in the islands and Guam and Samoa
- Streamflow Variability and Flooding
- Base Flow Hydrology: West Maui
- Erosion and Sediment Transport
--Most water-quality issues here in Hawaii District are sediment issues
- Watershed Restoration Partnerships: Kamalo Watershed, Molokai
- Water-Quality Related to Land Use - NAWQA: change from agricultural land
(sugar or pineapple) to residential
- NAWQA Spin-offs (potential)
- El Nino-related Drought in the Pacific: Marshall Islands 1998
- FEMA Disaster Assistance
- Equipment and Technology Needs
- Data Section Accomplishments
- Database Management
- NWISWeb
--Water levels are referenced to mean sea level (NWIS Issue - NWISWeb)
--Sea level is changing!
- Hawii needs water levels displayed!
--HUCs - no standards
- Real-time data issues - no DCPs
- Recent Hydrologic Conditions
- Future issues and technology
- Need DOI line to Micronesia - exploding population, increasing unemployment
- Integrated Studies
- Question about SLEDS??
- Not using SLEDS - couldn't get it to work.
1.
Mark Nilles will check on the status of why SLEDS cannot be installed successfully in the
Hawaii District.
2.
Mark Nilles will report back to Bill Carswell on what he can find out about the overall
SLEDS status and plans from the Office of Surface Water. Bill will bring the issue forward to
the Senior Staff.
- Regarding HUCs - no standards
3.
Greg Allord and Bob Pierce will address the status and plans for Hydrologic Unit Code
for Hawaii. Discuss resolution needed with NRCS.
- Question about Datums for Hawaii??
- Datums question framed. Datum should be relative to mean sea level. This was brought up
to CPAC as a need with respect to the NWISWeb page and the ability to display ground-water
data.
4.
Steve Hammond & Tom Wood will discuss the status and plans for connectivity to the
Outer Islands.
- Town Meeting Presentations were given for AIS, DIS, NWIS,
and CAPP
- CPAC members and all District employees participated in the town meeting, questions and answers
sessions.
- DIS
Program Office Update presented by Tom Wood
- Status of AIS
presented by Isabelle Halley
- NWIS Status
presented by Alan Lumb
- Questions for Alan:
- Regarding DISPLAA graphics: Why are there three replacement graphics packages;
-- DISPLAA will not be available and there will be no one solution to replace DISPLAA.
- Can WRD buy the license from DISPLAA?
-- This will be discussed at CPAC.
- How many Districts cannot get historic daily values?
-- Besides Florida, there are several others. This is being addressed by NWISWeb team.
- Regarding NWISWeb, do we want to build retrieval capabilities within the Web?
-- To what extent are we going to be using the Web within Districts to get basic NWIS data.
This needs to be evaluated and explored.
- What are archiving Unit Values? Are there guidelines?
-- Unit Values Online
-- Memo asking WRD Districts not to archive unit values but to keep them on line.
Hirsch wants unit values online. CPAC is working on an issue that involves using CD-ROM technology
to archive unit values. Ernie Dreyer is working on a guideline for archiving all unit values and
supplementary data that is used to work up the record. Another group in the discipline offices are
working on archiving data and updating OFR 02-57.
- Graphics package: What about the new graphics output files? Is anyone testing this?
-- There are some pretty trashy outputs. Opening the output files?
- Questions from the District graphics and illustrations unit:
- Annual report graphics? Status? Sun must run Framemaker - is this going to
be replaced?
-- Merritt Blalock's annual report scripts have been adopted by about 35 Districts.
The script retrieves the data from NWIS, merges the data and the heading into a mif
format. No Frame license on the target platform is required because of this mif format.
5.
Alan and Greg will get together with the District employee to find out what the issue is,
and from this meeting, Alan and Greg will put the graphics question on the next agenda.
The issue is: What has been done?
What hasn't been done? When?
- Greg's CAPP presentation goes here (Greg had no presentation slides at this
meeting.) -- Discussion included:
- Policy and Communications
- Publishing Interest Group Meeting
- Standards
- Support of Free Products
- Denver Distribution ORACLE data base
- No data to back up the answers to management and cost questions
- Testing Pre-flight server for Districts to test output in Madison
- Training
- Configuration and how to server reports to the public by pdf rather than html
- Reports Warehouse for download or ordering
- Flashpoint: MACs are not part of the plan? Half of Madison shop is MAC.
Greg's views that new platforms do not have to be MACs. First machines to get off MACs is
GIS work. No longer viewed as the strongest platforms for publishing. The cost of switching
off is high: training costs are high, purchasing software.
- Windows files are getting accepted by sending reports out to print. MAC Site Administration
is an issue.
- Is the Bureau coming together in the Bureau publishing arena? -- NO
But there is a Reports Stewardship team. About forty reports undergo a quality review
every year. Quality is consistent across the Division. This issue will be brought to the new
GIO as a Bureau publishing issue.
- Standards - font sets - are they being provided across the different platforms. Under the guise
of the Visual Identity, this will happen by a Bureauwide buy for the Bureau font solution based
on Windows 2000.
The town meeting with the Hawaii District was the best one with respect to attendance
and with a lot of questions and answers, which follows below:
Q&A: Discussion of Dell GX150 Celeron processor provided to all Districts. Follow-on note from
Scott McEwen to Jacob Bohr dated 11/06/00:
At the Computer Policy Advisory Committee (CPAC) meeting last week, the Hawaii district pointed out that
the Dell GX150's Celeron processors are far less powerful than Pentium cousins. While they did not wish to
look the proverbial "gift horse in the mouth," the SA and District Chief did feel that the GX150 machines
they received were not suitable for the modeling activities for which they were intended, and that the GX150s
would be given to less demanding staff.
It was noted that Celerons are not what we should be buying, since WRD typically need to invest into
high-end machines for the most demanding needs, shuffle around older machines from high-end staff to
intermediate staff, and dump the oldest, slowest equipment. That's an technology refreshment strategy that
many districts use.
- CPAC attendees and the District Chief participated in discussions about the town meeting.
- Frank Sager, Minnesota District, reported remotely on the NT TAC recommendation for the NORTON Ghost Imaging
Solution package, with the expectations of receiving both comments and purchasing approval from the CPAC members.
A discussion on the technical details of the recommendation followed.
This would not be forced on the districts. A centralized purchase with the use by Districts would be desirable
but not mandatory. Cost recovery is an issue if the District is not using the product (or any product.) Scott
McEwen opted for consistency in each District to support the Personal Computers. This product works with everything,
WIN2000, WinNT, 95, 98, Linux but works better in a standard hardware configuration. Licensing is holding up some
Districts from buying WIN2000. Nelson indicated that it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade to
WIN2000.
Nelson Williams wants to go on the record to say that, with respect to this product issue, he thinks it is great
that NT TAC is being proactive rather than reactive. CPAC supports the NT TAC recommendation to support this
product. The DIS Program Office will support this product. Tom Wood and the DIS Program office will ask the
Districts by email to let him know if they are interested in they would like to participate in a mass buy. The
recommendation from NT TAC is accepted.
6.
Tom Wood will send out to the Districts information on this product's overview and will solicit
any interest from anyone who wishes to be part of a centralized purchase.
- Closure was brought to the Lahey Fortran Compiler Action Item from the Reston CPAC meeting.
- CPAC formally recommends Lahey Fortran.
- Because Dan Winkless is a technical lead for the Fortran Help Group, and he doesn't currently have a copy
of Lahey Fortran, one will be purchased for him by the Office of Information.
NT TAC should consider the following for inclusion on their web pages, linked in their left-hand margin
frame under "Development -> Programming Languages..."
Lahey Fortran LF 95 PRO v5.6 is the recommended Fortran compiler for the Windows NT/2000 operating system.
This development package costs $795 via open market.
For Fortran applications that use the Graphical Kernel System (GKS) standard for graphics, the Interacter
v4.30 multi-platform user interface and graphics library may be useful. The Hydrologic Analysis Software
Support (HASS) Program can provide a library of routines that will convert many GKS calls to Interacter
graphics calls. If you have an application that uses GKS, contact HASS to see if this library can be used
with your application. This package costs an additional $675 via open market.
Currently, there is no blanket purchase agreement for Lahey Fortran. LF95 PRO can be purchased directly
from Lahey by calling (800) 548-4778.
General information on Lahey Fortran is available at their website.
http://www.lahey.com/
7.
Steve Hammond will see to it that the Office of Information (OI) would buy a Fortran Lahey
compiler for Dan Winkless, since Dan supports the Fortran help function.
- After the break, CPAC was updated on the Data and Records Archiving issue.
- The issue that Loren Kloft reported on as charged by CPAC and is concerned about a narrower charge on
electronic archival of NWIS unit value data and Project Unit Value Data. Loren had understood from
talking to Colleen Babcock that there is no reason to archive unit values because NWIS can regenerate
records; because with 4_1 - all the unit values and the supplementary data will be stored.
Scott wants "guidelines" which can be view as cookbook instructions for the Site Administrators
who will be asked to archive electronic NWIS unit value and other project data. Just add the details
to Loren's outline. This would be about 15 documents.
"What is original data records?" Is the important but difficult-to-answer question.
A discussion ensued and CPAC agreed that archival instructions were necessary.
The newer archival group headed by Linda Geiger in Reston has a broader issue that is concerned
with the revision of OFR92-56. Linda Geiger has incorporated Loren Kloft's document into the
discipline offices.
8.
Mark Nilles to get a timeline for the discipline office archival group's deliverable.
9.
Mark Nilles (discipline offices), Sandy Williamson (Biology/NAWQA) and the Scott McFarlane (NRP).
will collect review comments from the discipline offices; NAWQA personnel needs to know what
1) NAWQA needs to archive and 2) what is taken care of.
Bill Carswell recommends that Loren's document stand "as it is" for a template
"work-in-progress" under development and CPAC can call the document an "Interim" recommendation
until the discipline office come through with the revision of OFR 92-56. Also, Bill Carswell recommends
that a database administrator training course for archiving electronic data be held.
10.
Loren Kloft and the "next step" action item will be to ensure that the Section Chiefs,
Site Administrators, Regional Hydro Technicians Committees and Ernie Dreyer review the comments and
suggest more details than Loren's CPAC archival document. Loren will compile the comments, but will hold
off on updating the necessary pages that would complete the CPAC archival document.
The document produced by Loren Kloft is at URL:
http://ky.water.usgs.gov/cpac_eda.htm
- A list of NWIS DBM duties and tasks were presented - in anticipation for becoming the basis for developing
the District NWIS DBM position description.
NWIS DB Manager Task Lists
11.
Mark Nilles to update the document and hand the document over to NWIS, who will own this document.
12.
Alan Lumb will send out an email to all Senior managers distributions A,B,C, D, DC, CD, ETC. to
announce the availability of this document.
- A discussion and demo was presented on the Emerging Technologies Topic is Infrastructure for Districts to Serve
Maps.
- Sandy's Presentation (insert Sandy's PowerPoint presentation here).
- Sandy's Demo: (Do not Fwd widely)
- Questions to Sandy Williamson follow:
The question is what would the cost be for hardware and software for this kind of infrastructure?
Not all Districts need a server. Maybe this should be served like NATWeb is served or as Regional
Servers.
Is the integration of data layers part of the CPAC purview?
Do we wait for Gateway? Or Atlas? Or do we something simpler first?
Does this overlap Gateway to the Earth? -- YES, but the deliverable date is unknown.
Update to GILS is called Earth Explorer and the National Atlas: these two programs are involved also.
- Hawaii could use $20K per year for a few year and get all of its stations incorporated into such a system
that Sandy has demonstrated. The Hawaii cooperators are interested.
13.
Greg Allord, Sandy Williamson and Carl Goodwin frame the issue and see where these programs
stand; Gateway, Atlas, and EROS Data Center. Maybe, if there is something interesting on the near horizon,
then CPAC can invite Ken Lanfear to come to the next CPAC meeting to talk about Gateway to the Earth.
A Gateway briefing document ahead of time would be important two weeks prior to the meeting so educated
questions could be asked. Also, invite Atlas, and EROS Data Center. Also, Enviromapper for NWIS.
CPAC needs to find out if this technology is important to a District.
CPAC will go to the next WRD Senior Staff Meeting, which is a NMD joint meeting, with an articulation of
what capability WRD would like to have so that EDC could deliver to WRD for a WIN-WIN solution.
Sandy
Williamson and Mike Slifer will be delivering the CPAC message at the WRD Senior Staff Meeting during the
Third Week in January. Venture capital could be a source of funds.
Steve Hammond will get this on the
WRD Senior Staff meeting agenda.
Maybe a GEOSPATIAL interface to NWISWeb would be the minimum.
- Action Items from the previous day were recaptured and the agenda for today was reviewed and amended.
- Alan Lumb presented the NWIS
Issues and Concerns
- Questions to Alan:
- What is the bottom line?
The bottom line is that Alan Lumb and Steve Hammond will call Lew Wade with feedback from today's
CPAC discussion. The immediate issue revolves around the next major NWIS release; release 4_1; and
whether this release should be split into two releases; one for ADAPS and one for QW/GWSI subsystems.
Lew Wade will meet with Bob Hirsch on November 2 to discuss the current status and plans of NWIS.
Steve is not certain that an NWIS split release may not be the best approach. ADAPS is viewed as
holding up ( about 57 % of the ADAPS 4_1 functions are ready) the release of the QW and the GWSI
functions. The remaining 43% of the ADAPS work is not as difficult as the first 57%.
Long term NWIS staffing issues continue to exist. More testers are needed for ADAPS to relieve
Jeff Christman who can be used more for coding.
Colleen Babcock indicates to Alan Lumb that Mark Farmer, ADAPS programmer, is going to work on the
project about 90% - up from 50%.
- What are the release issues?
QW Phoenix talked about this for several days in their last. Phoenix recommended not to split the
release after hearing Colleen Babcock's discussion of the current status and options. QW Phoenix
doesn't think that 4_1 is getting all of the QW functionality that it needs; bits and pieces are being
delivered. The NWIS QW Phoenix group thinks that Spring 2002 rather than Spring 2001 would be the
earliest that a NWIS 4_1 release schedule date that NWIS 4_1. If this is the case, one recommendation
from Phoenix is that QW 5_1 functions would be added if the full NWIS 4_1 release is delayed until
Spring 2001.
- What are the release date issues?
NWIS indicates that there should be no release during working up the annual data report. Installation
generally are scheduled over a three month window. Alan indicated that a patch has been discussed to add
additional functions between releases 4 and 5.
NAWQA has to aggregate their data and there are issues here with respect to scheduling the new
version's installation.
CPAC recognized that an NWIS split release is out of the picture.
Scott McEwen recommends that NWIS and WRD make a Spring 2001 release happen and to dedicate
programming and testing resources necessary to make this happen.
Greg Shank indicates that a late release is much preferred to a buggy release by the hydrologic
technicians.
Mark Nilles indicates that the NWIS factory is broken. The incremental approach is no longer
working.
Database modernization and revolution is needed.
Gary McMahon agrees that the NWIS bug-free approach is paramount.
- Barry Hill came forward with enhancements from the Data Chiefs at the last CPAC meeting. A split
version would not be desirable. The current system functions and the annual data report can
be produced. Another vote here for the bug free tested complete version that works well. Throwing
resources at Alan for the release may not be the answer.
- Steve Glodt says that NWIS is frustrated with the moving target. NWQL expectations for NWIS and
NWIS requirements are unknown at this time. NWIS 4_1 was not delivered - and now NWQL needs the
5_1 requirements. Full attribution and full testing/bug-free release (not split) is needed by
Spring 2001. Another one year delay is unacceptable.
- Bill Carswell say that a Spring 2001 release is needed and expected.
- Nelson Williams relates the story of the mythical man month.
- CPAC recommends that NWIS support a full release for NWIS 4_1.
- Tom Wood indicated that the DISPLA product is not supported by CA anymore.
- CPAC recommends that the DISPLA option for NWIS be reconsidered.
14.
Tom Wood will talk to Computer Associates (CA) regarding the options to re-license DISPLA and
let CPAC know the results by email.
15.
Tom Wood will report the test results back to CPAC. Shawn Noble and Sun TAC will test NWIS and
DISPLA on Sun Solaris 8 with the new Fortran compiler.
- NATWeb
- AFS has been procured and delivered.
- One Sun has been acquired and the location for his hardware is being determined.
- Dan Winkless continues to work full time on NatWeb.
- The NatWeb crew visited the NatWeb sites in Menlo and Arizona to meet with the operational
staffs.
NatWeb has been designed based on the 1999 CPAC action item to make real-time data on the WWW.
NWISWeb is a integral part and subsystem of NATWeb. Susan, Colleen and Jimmy Bisese have been
members of NATWeb. Since that time, these members have received new assignments and that a meeting
should be held to determine the next steps in the NatWeb. Paradigm shifts (mysql, webveg, etc.)
have occurred during the NWISWeb development. (The processes needing analyzing: bringing in the
NWIS data, loading the NWIS data and serving the data to the customers. ) Performance, scalability
and traffic analysis are under investigation. A repeatable load test is needed to determine
capacity of the NatWeb. This test should be performed prior to make a lot of hardware and
software changes.
To announce the release of NWISWeb to the public, WRD needs to know the testing results.
- The next steps are:
- Capacity testing.
- Installation of the three NatWeb servers. One Sun Server was shipped on October 17.
One Sun Server arrived in Reston yesterday.
- A Sun 250 is at each location - the AFS system runs and feeds the data to the 450 Sun Server.
My sql and the data files and the Perl programming to serve the customers resides on the Web
server. The data coming from the Districts also. NWISWeb function and the replication needs
to be documented and analyzed; after which a determination that the pieces/subsystems ought to
be moved off the web server. Processing will be reduced by about 1/3 by implementing the
NATWeb system.
- Lorna Schmid indicated that a technical team meeting of the NatWeb and the NWISWeb needs to
be scheduled. Lorna indicates that the repeatable load test is key to the project.
12 Districts responded to Lorna's sample survey on customer demand based on rt_www, then we
could expect to get some statistics per month. The cumulative guess is determined the number
of user requests in a non-event month. User per month, users per day, etc statistics were
estimated by Jim Slack.
- Is anyone looking at outsourcing? Yes, but costs were extremely high.
16.
CPAC will encourage a few good folks to assist NatWeb. What can CPAC do for NatWeb? When Lorna
Schmid sends out an email to solicit help,
- Mike Slifer presented a plan for an external review of the NWIS. The review will be funded by FY00 reserve
funds. A caveat from Bob Hirsch is that a subset working group of CPAC to work with the NWIS group to see that
the $100,000 is spent to deliver a usable product resulting from the review.
- A status report was given on the NWIS External Review Plans; and recommendations will be provided by a CPAC
sponsored group to work with NWIS and the contractor on the process.
NWIS Strategy
presented by Alan Lumb.
- 6 months -- General Tasks:
- Write statement of work
- Conduct milestone reviews -- 10%, 50%, 80%
- Write opinion/analysis on final deliverable for Hirsch/Senior Staff
Bill Carlswell asked about assessment of the Canadian NWIS-like systems. Bill indicated that several
District Chiefs from the Canadian border states reported that the system is impressive.
Question from Mark Nilles about how the prioritization of user requirements. All user requirements are
funneled through the NWIS User Groups for prioritization regardless of the sources of the requirements.
Question from Sandy Williamson on RIT about how priorities are sorted out among the various NWIS users
groups.This model works as long as there are sufficient resources, but this team did not work.
Questions about Strategic Issues Team and the Architectural Issues Team. Scott McEwen seems to think
these teams have fizzled.
Bob Hirsch and the Senior Staff want an independent outside NWIS review. Bill Carlswell recommends
that a Senior Staff member on the CPAC group. Mike Slifer has received the charge for overseeing the
external NWIS review. Mike suggests that the CPAC subgroup review the "NWIS external review" statement
of work and the deliverables before the review begins. The role of CPAC may be to help NWIS see that
they stay on target with the NWIS releases. Mike Slifer wants the independent NWIS review to answer
the question of whether the NWIS process is broken. The CPAC subgroup would help validate the
contractor's outside view about NWIS processes and resources. The CPAC subgroup would advise Senior Staff
with recommendations regarding NWIS processes. Next year, there should be some additional resources
available for NWIS. Bob Hirsch and Senior Staff wants to carve out this funding from the Bureau.
Some discussion points on short term NWIS issues:
What does it take to get to NWIS 4_1 on the street? Does NWIS need more resources for this?
Some discussion points on long term NWIS issues:
The existing contractor needs to look at some NWIS processes with respect to improving the
development of the NWIS 5_1.
Bring in a benchmark solution where a contractor who has some success and failure stories.
Bring in a second contractor who can be a check and balance on the first contractor.
17.
The NWIS External Review team would meet with Bob Hirsch, present a draft charge, and Bob
Hirsch will respond to the scope of the task. The CPAC NWIS external review committee members are:
Mike Slifer, Chair; Steve Hammond; Scott McEwen; Sandy Williamson; Nelson Williams, Steve Brady and a
discipline office representative.
- The DIS FY2001 funding levels for Hardware and Software were finalized.
DIS Support Funding Summary
FY2001, Tom Wood
- Three high priority DIS-related funding needs: security, NT TAC and the increased fund for field
support for third-part software. CPAC feels that it is very important to fund these priorities.
The Chair will send a memo to Steve Blanchard who will pass this onto the WRD Senior Staff regarding
the importance of these three critical funding needs.
- A discussion was held how to maintain the benefits of the DIS Office (before, during, and after the
transition).
- CPAC discussed the status and plans for real-time data acquisition from non-GOES telemetered gages,
that resulted from the polling of the non-GOES telemetered gages.
- What is the level of support needed?
In an event, the cooperator wants to call the station and get the stage values. Iowa,
Maryland and other Districts are in need of the writing of programs to poll the data.
The Districts wanted a version of the polling software ported to the Sun. This raised
the red flag for Scott McEwen. Web support is needed for these types of stations. Is this
a District problem/issue or a National problem/issue. The OSW survey quantified the numbers
of stations that have telemetry stations that are other-than-GOES. Ask OSW if it is ready
to recognize the need for support. Define the support. Georgia District purchased polling
software that is a possible solution. Give such a District to package the system for other
Districts and then hand this application over to NWIS.
18.
Scott McEwen is to draft a letter for Carl Goodwin/CPAC to send to OSW to reconsider the
"polling software for non-GOES sites" support issue.
19.
Scott McEwen to have the five or six Districts involved define what the actions would be to
support the "polling software for non-GOES sites" support issue.
- CPAC members brought to the table five main issues from their constituents at the Minnesota CPAC
meeting - identifying what issues are important. At the Hawaii meeting, CPAC prioritized these issues
in order to build CPAC goals for the future.
(Priority list goes here, Charlie Merk will provide the final list and annotations.)
- FY2001 CPAC goals were presented by Bill Carswell.
20.
Carl Goodwin and Charlie Merk put together a presentation for WRD Senior Staff covering the
goals for the last year and the goals for the next year (the 3 CPAC goals or a wrapper around the
three goals. These goals were voted on to be: FUTCOM; field computer software development issues
and FRAMEMAKER viability). All CPAC members are to provide their ideas about the list of accomplishments.
FUTCOM: comprehensive (6-12 months) Vs. Focused (3 months). Options follow:
- Update entire FUTCOM '98
- Update 1 or 2 FUTCOM '98
- Focus on NWIS Architectural Issues Team (AIT) list
21.
Carl Goodwin to send an email to all WRD employees with an overview of CPAC, its members,
the constituency groups, this calendar year goals, and the previous calendar year accomplishments.
Suggestions would be solicited from WRD employees. The CPAC URL would be advertised in this one page
email.
Bill Carswell suggested CPAC goals for FY2001 include:
- 22.
A CPAC subgroup is charged to revise and update the CPAC Charter with the Bureau
reorganization in mind. Bill Carswell, Steve Hammond and Carl Goodwin and Charlie Merk will
constitute this CPAC subgroup.
- 23.
A CPAC subgroup will revise FUTCOM. The FUTCOM report will be delivered with an
eye on leading the Bureau Direction in light of the reorganization. This FUTCOM will focus on
the WRD DIS and NWIS Architectural Issues Team issues. CPAC suggested breaking down this report
topics into groups. Database and telecom futures are to be included. Suggested steps for FUTCOM
follow. Frame the state of computing in the water discipline to set the stage. Frame the premises.
Review issues of the AIT and prioritize. The team members would be led by Scott McEwen and would
include Greg Allord, Nelson Williams, and a GIS representative. Scott McEwen will draft a charge
back to CPAC within the thirty days.
- 24.
CPACcharged a subgroup on Emerging Technology, along the lines of what Sandy
Williamson has performed. The team would include Sandy Williamson, Mike Slifer, Gary McMahon and
Charlie Merk to coordinate the emerging technology topics and CPAC presentations.
- 25.
Steve Hammond will investigate the use of investment or seed money dollars would be
needed using the ICOM model or some other construct. The goal is to have Senior Staff buy off on
the seed money concept. One suggestion is to have seed money for the hardware and/or software rather
than huge competition for a project and salaries.
- Bill Carswell presented FUTCOM and computer oriented strategic direction.
CPAC will continue to function with Steve Hammond being Lew Wade's replacement. CPAC has headed off
catastrophic disasters by holding the CPAC meetings quarterly in District offices. See notes above for
more information on this topic.
- Emerging Technologies II session: Charlie Merk presented plans of field computer investigations.
A demo on field forms for surface-water crest gage stations and GW levels was presented
- Status and Plans for seed money for projects were discussed:
26.
Carl Goodwin -- Three high priority DIS-related funding needs: security, NT TAC and the
increased fund for field support for third-part software. CPAC feels that it is very important to fund
these priorities. The Chair will send a memo to Steve Blanchard who will pass this onto the WRD Senior
Staff regarding the importance of these three critical funding needs. The Char will send a memo to Steve
Blanchard who will pass this onto the WRD Senior Staff regarding the importance of these three critical
funding needs.
The Chair will add another request for a critical need for CPAC seed money for emerging technology, about
$20K request for seed money.
- A third discussion on Emerging Technologies was presented by a demo of ArcPad 6.0.
- The CPAC Charter was review for procedures on CPAC chair replacement; a list of volunteers was solicited.
Mike Slifer volunteered. The process will be finalized at the next meeting when the vote will be held.
- CPAC Membership rotations in the upcoming year may include the following:
- Bill Carswell started in May 1998.
- Carl Goodwin started in February 1998.
- Scott McEwen started in February 1998.
(Jim Bettandorf is the next Regional Computer Specialist in line for CPAC membership.)
- Gary McMahon started in August 1998.
27.
Carl Goodwinand the Charter subgroup will review the CPAC charter with respect to rotations
terms and notify the Regional Hydrologist requesting the selection of replacement CPAC members.
- The issues of accessibility for the disabled with regards to USGS web pages were discussed.
28.
Nelson Williams and Loren Kloft will be the CPAC liaison with Lorna Schmid and develop a one-page
document describing WRD recommendations for web accessibility for the disabled. Two weeks before the
next meeting.
- Greg Allord presented the status of publishing software activities; followed by a question and answer
session.
- (insert Greg Allord's PowerPoint presentation here, after November 16)
29.
Tom Wood to invite Bob Wakelee to the February CPAC meeting for a discussion on telecommunications
support for publishing activities. Improved bandwidth for the cooperators - possibly thru the Univerities
is being investigated by OPS and should be reported on during the agenda item.
30.
Greg Allord will provide a draft to communicate the publishing plans and activities. Including
the District Issues concerning software publishing packages, rationale, analysis, conclusions, "what's
on the horizon", etc. Greg will send an email as a "heads up and awareness" to CPAC and
WRD publishing employees, many of whom may not have attended the PIG Conference this last summer.
Feedback in the form of review comments will be soliticited.
Due date is November 16.
- Question about BRD pubs in warehouse? BRD publishes thru NIST.
- Question about FRAMEMAKER viability?
- Greg Shank would like some clarification for his District employees regarding the pros and cons of
FRAMEMAKER.
- The WRD employees have a large investment and have been trained in FRAMEMAKER.
- The Hawaii wrap-up session included the following discussions:
- The next CPAC meeting is in Columbus, Ohio.
31.
Carl Goodwin will validate with the Ohio District Chief. Carl will find out who the District
contact should be for computer support and logistics; and then notify Charlie Merk who will
coordinate the logistics. The dates are January 30 to February 2.
- The CPAC meeting in the Southeastern Region will be scheduled for May, 2001.
32.
Carl Goodwin will check with the Regional Hydrologist for the following choice of dates:
May 8-10 and May 1-3. Some suggestions for locations include: Tennessee and Alabama.
- The agenda items for the next meeting were brainstormed: Publications and Telecommunications;
Disability Web Issues; Emerging Technology; External NWIS Review: Pulication Issues; Senior Staff Meeting
Report Out on CPAC Followup Issues; CPAC Charter; SPLUS Isues; FUTCOM.
- 33.
Bill Carswell will see that the WEB-MAP issue gets on the agenda for the WRD Senior Staff
meeting with NMD representatives in January 2001.
- 34.
Steve Hammond will investigate the charter of the SPIDER group and report back to CPAC
- list of CPAC action items from this meeting included:
-- BIN List and the next steps
-- A draft agenda for the next meeting was developed and prioritized.
- Agenda items for the next meeting:
- Emerging Technoloyg (Williamson)
- External NWIS Review: (Slifer and Lumb)
- Publication Issues; Senior Staff Meeting report out on CPAC following issues (Steve
Hammond)
- CPAC Charter (Carl Goodwin)
- S-PLUS Issues (Tom Wood)
- FUTCOM (Carswell)
- Disability Web Issues; Accessibility for the disabled with regards to USGS web pages
(Nelson Williams and Loren Kloft)
- Publications and Telecommunications:Telecommunications support for publishing activities
(Tom Wood and Bob Wakelee). Some specific topics follow:
- Status of VBNS
- Cost to make Madison a gateway? Other public web-intensive sites
- Telecommunications Future Plans
- Remote Field Offices
- Infrastructure for Serving Maps in the District Office
- Gateway to the Earth
- Atlas
- EROS Data Center
- Enviromapper for NWIS
- Meeting Adjourned
The following CPAC
members were in attendance:
