V1, 7/18/05 6 community of choice- that is of the research, academic community (a perfectly valid user). We respectfully disagree.  We are making sincere efforts at reaching out to a broad group of users.  Funding and number of personnel constrain how many groups can be approached.  There also exist cultural divides that will take more resources than are available to SEACOOS to bridge.  We are initiating this process and foresee this as a critical mission for SECOORA.  We hope our initial investigation will help clarify the magnitude and needs of this effort. · Needs a 5 year strategic plan which is reviewed and updated each year as the “market” as well as the technology changes. We agree but see comments in the next section on this topic. · There needs to be a “credible” estimate of what this operational system, fully scoped and transitioned to meet diverse user needs will cost. The committee believes that its operational costs are significantly undervalued. We agree and view this as a critical statement.  We concur with the assertion that COOS is significantly undervalued. We have made an attempt on at least collecting data on what the individual SEACOOS team member’s costs are, but we need to follow through on a more complete cost analysis.  We fear that figures used to date by OCEAN.US and USCOP are not realistic. Governance and Planning · A rigorous long term strategic plan needs to be developed which is reviewed semiannually (rolling), primarily because the sponsorship (Market) is changing and evolving rapidly We are in general agreement with the recommendations stated here but note that SEACOOS has already spent considerable time on a strategic plan and an implementation plan.  These we developed to arrive at a consensus within SEACOOS on direction and priorities and have proved vital to our progress.   However, the development of these plans necessarily did not include the full SECOORA community.  At present the SEACOOS efforts are serving as the starting points (i.e., strawmen) for similar planning efforts within SECOORA.  The need to distinguish between SEACOOS and SECOORA planning efforts is not yet clear and requires first that we clearly understand the role of SEACOOS within the RA/RCOOS construct.  Given funding uncertainties it is clear that SEACOOS should begin to think about a long-term vision for how the transition to an operational program might occur, within the context of the RA development process. · It is critical that a long term financial management strategy be developed and put in place which reflects the changing “colors” of money as a program progresses