[Go-essp-tech] Action item: reach consensus on handling CMIP5 user requests

[Drach, Bob]

All,

One of the action items from today’s telecon is to reach a consensus on dealing with CMIP5 user requests and bug reports.

There are several related issues:

With a federated system, users will probably not always be aware of what data node or gateway they are interacting with. Some users are bound to get confused about who to ask for help or request a problem. So it’s up to the CMIP5 administrators to help them, preferably by:

        - Relaying the request to the relevant parties. For example, if a user at NCAR retrieves a GISS dataset hosted by the PCMDI gateway, resident on the NASA/NCCS datanode, the user may start by contacting NCAR. Depending on the situation, the appropriate response could be:

            - Forward to PCMDI to fix a gateway issue
            - Forward to NCCS to fix a data node problem
            - Forward to GISS to address a quality control issue, possibly necessitating unpublish/republish at NCCS.

        - Tracking the issue to ensure resolution.


For CMIP3 we relied on a single mailing list to the administrators, each following all user reports and responding as they saw necessary. This approach didn’t always work well but at least it spread the workload around.  I don’t see the same approach necessarily working for CMIP5, because:


 *   There will be many more users; it may be burdensome to follow all issues for all gateways.
 *   There will be more  administrators, which could result in a chaotic or uncoordinated response.

Charlotte mentioned that BADC uses a Help Desk approach. Is this something that could be copied or expanded for CMIP5 as a whole?

Bob
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