Text of Charge III
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A review of the North American ALMA operations funding proposal, prior
to submission to the NSF. Community assessment of the proposal is an
absolutely crucial task, and should make the proposal much stronger.
Can the ANASAC review the draft NSF proposal, and provide a short
assessment of the proposed North American ALMA operations funding plan?



ANASAC response during the face-to-face meeting
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Attendees: 
Andrew Baker
John Bally
Xiaohui Fan
Kelsey Johnson
Doug Johnstone
Lee Mundy
Alycia Weinberger
Jonathan Williams
Chris Wilson


We distilled our comments into seven key points:

1) Add a new section 2 giving the big picture of why the full proposal
should be funded. Suggested title "Fulfilling the promise".

2) Keep in mind who your audience is and what other documents will be
included in the proposal, i.e. ALMA Operations plan, supplementary budget
info? If this proposal is all they see, the less experienced reviewers won't
have the context to make a proper judgement. We recommended an alternative
figure to Figure 4.1 that showed concentric pie charts with the core, beyond
the core, enhanced services, and the user grants. This would show the
fraction from each partner group and emphasize how the US lacks automatic
funding for the latter two groups (outer two rings).

3) Along with the above figure suggestion, we recommend that the overall
document be reordered so that sections follow a more logical order beginning
with the core, beyond the core, enhanced functions, and user grants.
(e.g. move Sections 7 and 9 forward).

4) Strengthen the language to be more forceful in Section 6. Emphasize
the products up front and only discuss the "modest increase in budget"
afterwards. Section 6.2.1 was very short for its importance and requested
funding/staffing level. On the other hand, Section 6.2.2 was relatively
long for a relatively small item in the budget. Balance the text with
the funding. The title for Section 6.2.1 "Advanced User Support" is
misleading (advanced user or advanced support?) and somewhat uninspiring.

5) Section 7.2 (SIS mixer development) is vague and not well justified
in the text (although its importance was made clear to the committee
in the presentations).

6) The language is occasionly confused and inconsistent regarding
the NAASC and the User Grants. Present the latter as something with
roots and strong support from the community. The response to Charge I is
intended as providing alternative wording and a more complete justification
for Section 8.

7) Change the focus in Section 9.1 (Observatory wide coordination)
to be on how the NAASC will benefit from being at NRAO rather than the
other way around. Remove Section 9.2 (Long Range Vision) as it is not
appropriate for this proposal: keep the focus on ALMA alone.


We were unable to assess the NA ALMA operations funding plan because
we did not see the final budget.