V1, 7/18/05 20 and the method used to rank models. This report provides findings, recommendations and practical guidance for what the committee believes is important to address during these final years for the project. In giving this guidance, it is hoped that it will serve to reorient the project to fit the expanding and evolving IOOS view. General Findings It is the assessment of the committee that SEACOOS as an entity is often unsure of its “Mission”.  There is conflicting language in the briefing documents as to what it “is”. It is pitched to ONR as one entity (a technology demonstration), to Congress as another (a societally relevant demonstration project) and preliminary configured as another (observing system to answer research needs). The committee realizes that with the given amount of funding, it is not, nor could ever be, an operational system.  It is concerned with developing a concept of operations and a scaled down prototype for an operational system. Because it is pitched as having technology goals (“fuse” the existing systems), research goals (understanding the system) as well as societal goals (i.e. enabling enhanced SAR),   it important that it develops multiple sets of performance metrics. It must have technology performance goals and metrics and timelines against which its progress and successes can be measures and documented on an annual basis. It must also have information performance goals (how well does the new information satisfy the objectives of the research user community, the “client” agency (government) community, as well as the private sector user community). It needs to be a requirements-driven system, with specific sets of technology as well as “development” (societal) requirements and concept of operations (ConOPS). It must develop overall design plans and plans for transitioning to operations. Throughout this program, there needs to be a rigorous “systems engineering approach”,  which allows for rigor, accountability (not fiscal) and demonstrable design and build targets. At present, this is an observing system configured for the answering the pressing needs of one user community- the research community.  It must be clear that the configuration of this system has been optimized to meet the needs of the user community of choice- that is of the research and academic community (a perfectly valid user). It is essential, and of highest priority to develop a “credible” estimate of what this operational system, fully scoped and transitioned to meet diverse user needs will cost. The committee believes that the operational costs presented in the proposal are significantly underestimated and must be revisited. It is recommended that the jargon “super users” be dropped to more accurately reflect the composition of that segment of applied agencies or government users who are customers for the information. “Federal agency users”, “Applied agency users”, or simply “government users” (including regional state and local) might be more appropriate.