1^st Meeting of the MoU4 redaction committee, Krakow, Friday 16 April, 12:00 - 13:30

Presents for the redaction committee [1] : Dijana Klaric, Jean-François Geleyn, Claude Fischer, Piet Termonia

• General guidelines for the redaction of the MoU4 :
  • simplify the MoU and make it shorter, governance oriented, and not dealing with scientific choices and strategy.
  • action: Jean-François will send us a "colored" version of the MoU, underlining what could/should be suppressed/modified/... (mail sent yesterday by Jean-François)
  • no deliverables in the MoU but we can put commitments to have a strategic plan as reference (with mention of the possibility of a mid-term updating).

• Links with HIRLAM/convergence :
  • Task force (a non permanent, strong committee, transversal HARMONIE) has been proposed during HIRLAM review. It could be a nice first step to introduce the convergence between ALADIN and HIRLAM governances. We would need the ToR for the task force leader (either from ALADIN or HIRLAM)
  • The ALADIN/HIRLAM agreement is an annex to the MoU : it is announced in a small paragraph in the MoU. Action : Piet will review this paragraph and propose a new version for next HAC.

• LTM and CSSI
  • LTMs don’t have enough power : we need to increase both rights and duties of LTMs in the ToR of LTM (the limit is the national range).
  • We need a bridge between research and operation/system.
  • We need some coordination of LTMs, outside the ACNA position.

• Money
  • HIRLAM and LACE have a GNP based contribution. The Istanbul ALADIN GA decided to keep the flat-rate system with a ceiling written in the MoU, valid for 5 years, but, in special circumstances, the GA might vote to override it.
  • The flat-rate contribution is the same for all partners; the in-kind and the voluntary contributions are supposed to introduce an implicit GNP weighting. We should reformulate the in-kind and voluntary contributions paragraph in the next MoU (these contributions are difficult to monitor, specially for the commitments).
  • What value for the flat-rate ceiling in the MoU ? what if some country doesn’t pay ?
  • Long term question for PAC (Cornel’s action, see Claude separated email): how will we evolve from the current flat-rate+voluntary+in-kind system towards a GNP based contribution ? This won’t be on the MoU4.

• Bureau
  • If we keep a Bureau, we should define its ToR.

• LBCs from ARPEGE
  • No mention to ARPEGE LBCs since MoU2 (it was only in MoU1). Not worth adding in MoU4.

• Licence and ECMWF agreement
  • action Claude & Pat -> find some law experts in MF to deal with licence and ECMWF agreement
  • ECMWF won’t sign anything with ALADIN (ALADIN has no legal body to sign with) but with MF

• Code and maintenance issue
  • This point is technical but we should keep it in the MoU in a short preamble (common depository, know-how and common maintenance work), insisting on a strong commitment on the intentions but not much details on the way
  • action for everybody: think about other points to add to the preamble

Next meeting by teleconference on Monday 26 April.