Notes from the Vendor Meeting, September 29, 1999

SWPC's Business Plan (Ron Zwickl)

It is important to review the basis for SWPC's plans in light of its mission. Listed below, SWPC's mission statement acknowledges our core functions, our support of both users and vendors, and our need to to understand and describe the space environment.

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MISSION

The Space Weather Prediction Center is the Nation's official source of space weather alerts and warnings. The Center continually monitors and forecasts Earth's space environment; provides accurate, reliable, and useful solar-terrestrial information; and leads programs to improve services.

To serve the Nation and reduce adverse effects of space weather disturbances on human activities:

SWPC synthesizes and disseminates information about past, present, and future conditions in the space environment for space weather users and private industry vendors; we prepare the data we acquire for the national archive.
SWPC leads in development and implementation of programs in solar-terrestrial physics and space environment services by conducting research and developing techniques that improve monitoring and forecasting.
SWPC uses its expertise to advise and educate those who operate systems affected by disturbances in the space environment and those who have a general interest in our science.

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SWPC Strategic Principles, 1999

The following are the basis for our plans and goals

Synthesizes the Space Environment - we will describe the space environment based on all the information we have. Not only providing data, we hope to give a comprehensive picture of the environment.
Forecasts Space Weather - we will not just give the "nowcast" of the space environment, we will forecast space weather in that environment.
Provides Services to the Public - We are, after all, a service organization. We service the general public, the media, schools, as well as space weather users.
Conducts Basic Research - One of the most important aspects of improving our services is to understand the environment better. Our research program is vital to that effort.
Conducts Applied Research - SWPC is perfectly poised to not only conduct applied research, but transition such research into operations.
Fosters a Vendor Industry - We are committed to fostering a vendor industry; we are convinced that it will be helpful to our users and the public for us to partner with private industry.
Provides Support for Government Agencies - from our inception, SWPC has been expected to support other government agencies with space weather information. That we will continue to do.

Major Influences on SWPC

We are expected to respond to a number of special organizations. The first three listed below are "family" organizations, all part of NOAA.

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, our "parent" organization, provides the major portion of our funding, and oversees in our research efforts.
National Weather Service/National Centers for Environmental Prediction is another "parent" organization interested in our real-time operations. They provide some communications.
National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services, a "sister" organization to OAR, runs the satellites from which we get a major portion of data and their National Geophysical Data Center, which is the eventual archive for most of the space weather data SWPC uses in daily operations.. They partially fund us for the work we do in describing and overseeing the space environment instrumentation, and the data gathering and processing.

We also have special relationships with the following groups:

The Air Force runs a joint forecast center with SWPC and serves military customers as we service the civilian community. Many of the products that are issued from SWPC are joint products with the Air Force.
The International Space Environment Service (ISES), of which we are a lead member, is the organization that fosters a close international partnership for the purpose of keeping everyone informed of global space weather.
NASA is a special collaborator, sharing in research efforts and many data streams, and is a special customer for space flight hazards.
Vendors and potential vendors are a newly forming group of private companies interested in selling space weather services. We regard them as partners in serving customers.

SWPC Business Plan-A Brief List of Major Activities

These are the tasks, listed with some examples, that occupy the majority of SWPC's resources.

New Spacecraft and Instrument Development

GOES (SXI, new particle sensors)
NPOESS (new merged program with DMSP)
GEOSTORMS, real-time solar wind follow-on (?)

Advanced Product Development

Rapid Prototyping Center: rapid transition of data and models
Information Distribution System: acquisition and dissemination of data
Models: Ionospheric, magnetospheric, solar, and interplanetary
Data: Predictive products, such as Kp predictions

Services

Forecast/Operations center
Data processing and validation

Public and Customers

Vendors
Internet site improvements

Moving Towards Improved Customer Service

Fostering a Vendor Industry - Essentially, SWPC would like for vendors to provide tailored customer services, while SWPC focuses on improving generic, environmental nowcasting and forecasting services. Vendor-provided tailored services are vital to good service, as SWPC finds less and less time to meet individual user needs. It is also desirable as SWPC wishes to foster vendors as partners.

Research Underlies Better Services-The application of numerical models is seen as the critical element to improve our understanding of the space environment and to describe that environment. Precedents in meteorological weather have proven the power and value of numerical models.

Hand-in-hand with models for improving understanding and describing the environment are new data streams. SWPC is commited to investing in satellite instrumentation development and in new missions that will put spacecraft and instrumentation in new locations to collect novel, useful data.

The Line in the Sand and Beyond (Barbara Poppe)

When we ended the Vendor Meeting in April of '99, the problem on everyone's mind was how to establish a "line in the sand"-that is, to give vendors a clearly defined sense of what it is that SWPC plans to do, and what opportunities there are for vendors. While that was a useful paradigm to consider, we believe we have moved past it and can present today a clear sense of opportunity, without necessarily defining the limits of all possible endeavors that both SWPC and vendors might one day do.

The most important goal of everything we plan to say-the Name of the Game for SWPC and Vendors-is excellent customer service, whether from the government or from the private sector. To restate this important point, if excellent customer service can be provided by the private sector, SWPC will consider this a success. Excellent customer service provided by industry is a clear benefit to SWPC, because it benefits the customer.

SWPC strives to meet user needs

SWPC has striven, for the past 35 years, to serve its customers well. We have been recognized for our efforts in this by NOAA and others.

We believe SWPC has a governmental responsibility to provide information to the public about space weather, and as the public is the taxpayer, the services we provide are largely free.

However, we are persuaded that we cannot do everything that customers want of us, that it is not possible to "do it all," and that we welcome help in serving those customers.

Vendors have not filled many of the service gaps to date

We have been talking to vendors for 3 years about their hopes and plans to develop a service industry. Yet those 3 years have seen only a little development of services. We can attribute this to uncertain markets (will a user pay for services?), poor or incomplete access to data, corporate problems of which we know little, etc. You vendors are better aware of the problems than we are.

SWPC wants to help vendors get out ahead of SWPC with services and fill the gaps in services to users. Ultimately we want vendors to serve end users and SWPC to serve vendors and end users. But getting vendors positioned to launch a new business in space weather services requires that SWPC take a more active role in fostering the industry. Before explaining that, let me review some changes to our stance that will allow this fostering.

SWPC's Precepts

S CURRENTLY: SWPC is the nation's official source for alerts and warnings; clearly attributed and disseminated.

S REFINEMENT: No change

S CURRENTLY: Vendors are expected to create products tailored to specific end users; SWPC will not compete with vendors in the area of tailored products.

S REFINEMENT: No change

S CURRENTLY: SWPC's duty is to describe the environment

S REFINEMENT: Still true, but SWPC can't model the environment at all cadences and all resolutions, so SWPC will select some and leave others, creating an opportunity for vendors

S CURRENTLY: SWPC will release all public data and model outputs which SWPC uses and for which there is a user need

S REFINEMENT: With prior agreement, SWPC will not re-distribute vendor-owned product information

S CURRENTLY: Liability protection comes with SWPC products

S REFINEMENT: SWPC must "own" any model used to prepare SWPC-issued operational products

These precepts and their refinements, in fact, begin to draw lines in the sand that vendors can rely on, as well as open areas up to vendors. How SWPC defines its duty to describe the environment must, because of sheer volume of work, be limited and prioritized based on SWPC's estimation of the importance to users. Given that restriction on SWPC, SWPC may pledge not to compete with vendors able to describe the part of the environment SWPC cannot, and vendors presumably can build a tailored product on top of their environmental description.

While all public data and information (governmental, for the most part) will be available to the public as heretofore, a vendor's information need not be disseminated by SWPC. That is, with agreements in place, proprietary information passed to SWPC by a vendor will be handled in such a way as to preclude our making that information immediately available to all users.

Finally, it is likely that the liability protection that has inherent in government products in the past can carry over to a vendor product, if the model which produces the product is "SWPC's model." SWPC must, however, be assured that it can change and improve the model so as to give the best results at all times. This will apply, for example, in the case where SWPC would run a model once per day and issue the output, while a vendors would run the same model hourly and sell the output.

Suggestions for New Partnerships with Vendors

Given these changes in our precepts, SWPC is proposing a way of developing partnerships with vendors that will emphasize developing new vendor services. The services will target products that SWPC does not plan to issue. These could be either tailored products (effects) or environmental products (descriptive parameter values) that are excluded from SWPC interest. The arrangement between partners must be of mutual benefit to SWPC and a vendor, remembering that excellent customer service is the main benefit.

Partners will not exchange much money or resources, but each will spend its own resources on its own efforts. The bureaucratic tool best suited to this arrangement is the CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement).

Cooperation, not competition, is assured within the time frame of the CRADA. While developing a product, SWPC and the CRADA partner will cooperate. At the end of a negotiated time (3 years, perhaps), if the product "succeeds," SWPC will not compete or otherwise interfere with a vendor's services to users. If the product "fails," (perhaps the vendor abandons the service, or has few customers) another vendor or SWPC might pick it up and produce the product. More than likely, SWPC would encourage another vendor or abandon the product because of lack of user interest.

This offer of partnership would be open to as many simultaneous vendors as SWPC could support. Obviously that number would be limited by SWPC's resources.

What SWPC Contributes and Gains from such Partnerships

SWPC will contribute scientific and user expertise to any product development, giving assurance that the jointly developed products are firmly based on the best possible science.

SWPC will provide excellent data access for its partner. It might, in return, receive some reimbursement for the data service or the staff support.

SWPC will contribute effort in model development, but also gain collaboration in those efforts.

SWPC might be able to contribute previously developed verification and validation software for use with new products.

Most importantly, SWPC will help to develop, and gain a partner in providing, needed customer services.

What a Vendor Contributes and Gains from this Partnership

The vendor will provide expertise in translating environmental conditions into effects, while getting assistance in developing products.

The vendor will contribute effort in model development, but also gain collaboration in those efforts.

The vendor will bring to bear on the development his knowledge of an end user need. He will gain a partnering relationship with SWPC, and ensure absence of competition from SWPC for users.

The vendor will receive excellent access to SWPC's databases, particularly during development, and a head start on further product development.

The vendor will bring marketing skills and effort and a commitment to providing the service, while at the same time receiving the benefit of validation of SWPC information and some liability protection.

The CRADA Process

The CRADA will be announced in Commerce Business Daily (CBD) as an unspecific and open ended solicitation for partners to improve services to users. The solicitation will be good for up to a year, so that proposals can be accommodated when they are ready.

SWPC will select among respondents, but no more than one proposal per area will be accepted, thus avoiding competitive working conditions. The criteria for selection will be along the lines of:

SWPC's evaluation of usefulness, quality, and product's benefit to the nation.
The lack of conflict with anything SWPC is doing or the high level of synergy with SWPC's areas of research and services interests. Both conditions would be of interest to SWPC.
SWPC's available resources.
Likelihood of developing a successful (and marketable) product.

SWPC will accept as many vendor proposals as SWPC can afford.

The partners will complete CRADA work as rapidly as possible, and will free up resources when done. As partnerships succeed and SWPC resources become available, additional vendor partners will be chosen. From time to time, SWPC will re-issue the CBD solicitation and build a new list of evaluated proposals.

Another Opportunity Altogether (Ernie Hildner)

In another change of stance that will allow new vendor opportunities, SWPC is prepared to develop products, do some user testing of the products, and then allow them to be taken over by vendors. How this works is illustrated by the following example.

SWPC has chosen today to announce the issuance of a new product that was discussed with vendors briefly last April. The product, the D-Region Absorption Prediction plot is being put on the Web as a routine test product. As such, SWPC solicits criticism and suggestion about it, so that it can be improved, even substantially altered or discontinued, depending on that feedback.

By disseminating a routine test product, essentially SWPC has asked whether users are interested in this product, if they find it useful and important. By so doing, SWPC is "testing the market" for such a product. Perhaps a vendor wishes to distribute this or a similar product; if so, with appropriate safeguards, SWPC will cease issuance of its no-cost-to-users product.

Although SWPC will be charting its course carefully and steering towards its defined goals, this new opportunity to take over some aspects of what SWPC has pioneered and is currently doing signals opportunities for vendors. SWPC welcomes discussions about this kind of cooperation.

Notes from Discussions

What Vendors Want from SWPC

SWPC's knowledge about customers and their needs.

SWPC's help in identifying gaps in science.

Vendors Index: who's doing what.

List of current CRADAs.

Extent of other SWPC working partnerships.

Sample Business plan.

SWPC's plans, directions; new data, products and models-all in more detail than previously presented.

How can potential vendors get access to users with space weather vulnerabilities: phone requests? data base?

Hits on specific pages on SWPC's website are an indicator of interest in product.

Vendor Questions and Issues

What exactly does "Tailored Product" mean? How do "Environmental Products" differ from "Value Added Products?"

What is the distinction in "service to users" between SWPC issuing formal products and talking on the phone to a customer?

SWPC's serving government agencies makes the distinction between Vendors and SWPC fuzzy.

SWPC cannot partner with everyone.

Vendors may be competing with "subsidized" or "non-profit" activity.

Verification vs. Validation liability issues; SWPC will not validate a Vendor's tailored products.

SWPC will step in if customer is not "served" by a vendor.

Line in the sand still not clear.

How can vendors find out space environment effects?

from Insurance companies claims?

Other:

A vendor could provide higher resolution or cadence.

SWPC cannot do everything, and will not exercise its "ownership" of all environment products

SWPC will be a CRADA partner with more than one vendor in one area.

Changes in CRADA?

Vendors contribute to NOAA-SWPC stability and direction.

What role, if any, should SWPC play in fostering partnerships between vendors?

Perhaps vendors will no longer come to SWPC for all forecasts of the environment.

SWPC will develop complex interactions with service providers.

What use can vendors make of SWPC-RPC?

Government liability for vendor products put out by SWPC
Government not liable for additional vendor products (i.e. higher cadence)?
There is a high cost of litigation even when in the right.

Redrawing of the line is happening.