[fitsbits] Agenda for IAU-FWG business meeting

[Don Wells]

Dear Friends of FITS,

The IAU FITS Working Group [IAU-FWG] will hold a business session at
the General Assembly in Sydney in July; I append the proposed agenda.
Members of the worldwide FITS community who attend the General
Assembly, but who are not members of the IAU-FWG, will be welcome to
attend the session, which will probably be called '21.4' in the
schedule.

Comments on the issues listed and discussed below may be directed to
me at <dwells at nrao.edu>; I will summarize them during the session.

Regards,
Don Wells [Chair, IAU-FWG]

			      -=-=-=-=-

	  Agenda for the FITS Working Group business meeting
	     at the Sydney IAU General Assembly July 2003,
		   with duration of order one hour
			  Don Wells (Chair)

The Chair recommends that this business session make no formal
decisions on FITS policy or procedure, except for the nomination of
the new officers, because not all IAU-FWG members will be present.
The Chair will appoint a recording secretary for the meeting so that
the consensus of the meeting on the issues can be reported to the
absent members and to the larger FITS community.  Formal decisions on
policy and procedure will be made by formal votes conducted via email
at a later time.

1. Report on the state of the FITS Agreements [Wells] 5_min

   Proposals adopted during the past triennium and proposals pending
   will be reviewed.  Philosophical exhortations to the faithful will
   be uttered one last time by the current Chair.

2. Nomination of new officers [Wells, Grosbol] 5-10_min

   Patrick Wallace (UK) will be nominated to be Chair of the IAU FITS
   Working Group for the 2003-2006 triennium, succeeding Donald Wells
   (US).  William Pence (US) will be nominated to succeed Ernst
   Raimond (Netherlands) as Vice-Chair.  These nominations will be
   considered in the subsequent Commission 5 business meeting.

   Wells will propose that the IAU-FWG should specify a policy for
   regular (triennial?) changing of officers.

2. Proposal procedure and regional FITS Committees [Wells, Grosbol] 10_min

   Some members of the FITS community have proposed that the regional
   FITS committees should be abolished, and that proposals should be
   submitted to the IAU-FWG directly for approval.  Grosbol and Wells
   will recommend that the IAU-FWG maintain the regional groups as
   focus points and as part of the formal approval procedure (with
   veto power). It is obvious that the IAU-FWG needs to specify
   procedural rules for establishing new regional committees. Three
   changes in the rules for the life-cycle for new proposals should be
   considered:

   * specify that a fully open Internet discussion period must occur
     before a proposal is finalized for voting, rather than confining
     initial discussion to a single regional committee; probably the
     rule should specify that initial submission of proposals will be
     to the IAU-FWG Chair rather than to a regional Chair

   * specify that all regional committees will vote concurrently, on
     the exact same proposal. Probably the IAU-FWG should retain the
     right to modify proposals in limited ways.

   * specify that proposals will expire, and need to be re-started, if
     any regional committees or the IAU-FWG do not report formal vote
     results on them within specified time-limit(s)

3. Proposed standard levels of 'conformance' [Grosbol, Hanisch] 10_min

   Many members of the FITS community assume that the default
   interpretation of our FITS agreements has been and still is that
   all FITS readers should implement the full standard.  Others say
   that, while it is essential that we define one and only one way to
   implement each functionality, it is not wise to force all FITS
   readers to implement all functionalities.  Perhaps the IAU-FWG
   should define rules such that proposed new additions to the FITS
   standard could specify at what level they should be implemented,
   e.g. level 1:mandatory, level 2: recommended, ...

4. Criteria for revision of IAU-FWG Membership [Wells, Wallace] 10_min

   Wells will propose that the IAU-FWG should specify policies for
   the following matters:

   * regular (triennial?) changing of the IAU-FWG membership.  In what
     ways and for what reasons may IAU-FWG membership be changed
     between IAU General Assemblies?

   * maximum size of IAU-FWG, probably 20 (currently 13)

   * interests to be represented (e.g. optical/x-ray/radio/..,
     ground/space/VO/.., datacenters/universities/.., international
     entities, major software packages, major observatories, FITS
     traditions, ??)

   * IAU-FWG members to be members of or consultants to Commission-5 

5. IAU-FWG relationship to the VO standards efforts [Hanisch, Genova] TBD_min

   Francoise Genova <genova at cluster.u-strasbg.fr> writes:
   FG> There has been a discussion during the last IVOA meeting, about
   FG> how to oversee tha VO-driven standards in the coming years.
   FG> The proposal is to use the Virtual Observatory, Data Centers
   FG> and Networks WG.  The idea is that VO is just beginning and
   FG> still in Phase A and needs more flexible procedures than the
   FG> FITS WG, at least for the moment, and that a possible merging
   FG> of the two WG will be discussed not this time, but in 2006 -
   FG> after also some evolution of the FITS WG itself. The different
   FG> groups taking care of standards should of course be informed of
   FG> each other work (e.g. by having a few common members)
   FG> 
   FG> I will propose a more detailed 'charter' for the WG well before
   FG> our meeting at GA.

-- 
  Donald C. Wells    Scientist - GBT-PTCS Project     dwells at nrao.edu
                    http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory                +1-434-296-0277
  520 Edgemont Road,   Charlottesville, Virginia       22903-2475 USA
       (DCW is often in Green Bank, West Virginia, at +1-304-456-2146)