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Background

The NRAO/GBO Telescope Time Allocation Committee (TAC) makes recommendations to the Directors about scheduling priorities, approved time, proprietary period, and disposition constraints.   These are all included in the Observation Specification Disposition after approval from the Director.  The TAC does not re-evaluate the scientific or technical merit of the proposal and therefore they do not change the consensus comments or linear-rank.  They can, however, point out errors in the consensus comments that lead to changes in the text if approved by the corresponding SRP chair.

In practice there are two TAC meetings for each Solicitation.  The first meeting discusses only Large proposals, whereas  the second meeting discusses all remaining proposals.  These are called the Large proposal meeting and TAC meeting, respectively. 

Procedures

Here we list the procedures for the Large proposal and TAC meetings.  The procedures for these two meetings are similar but there are some differences (see below).  The TAC chair runs the meeting with close coordination of a TTA Member.

  1. Introductions/Guidelines.  We start with brief introductions and then a TTA member will give a short presentation with some guidelines.  The TAC chair will then add anything they want to emphasize.   A TTA Member may also give other presentations (e.g., Gender Equity update).
  2. Discussion by Facility.  Since time is allocated by Facility we organize the discussion around each Facility. We usually combine HSA and GMVA since there are fewer proposals for these Facilities.
    1. GBT.  The GBT scheduler will give a short presentation and then the TAC will begin their deliberations.
    2. VLA.  The VLA scheduler will give a short presentation and then the TAC will begin their deliberations.
    3. VLBA.  The VLBA scheduler will give a short presentation and then the TAC will begin their deliberations.
    4. HSA/GMVA.  The VLBA scheduler will give a short presentation and then the TAC will begin their deliberations.
  3.  Joint External Proposals.  We will review the recommendations for allocating time for these external Facilities.  For example, check that we are not going over the allotted time available and any issues.
  4. Postmortem.  The TTA member who coordinates the TAC meeting together with the relevant ADs will meet with the TAC to discuss any issues.


Here are some differences  between the Large proposal meeting and the TAC meeting:

  • Location.  The Large proposal meeting is held remotely, whereas the TAC meeting is a hybrid meeting located at one of the sites (Green Bank, Socorro, or Charlottesville).  
  • Active Large Projects.  During the Large proposal meeting the TAC will discuss and make recommendations about active Large projects.
  • External Joint Proposals.  During the TAC meeting proposals submitted to NRAO that are joint with external Facilities (not AUI/NA) are discussed and recommendations are made (up or down) to the Director.


Documents

Here we list the relevant documents that are needed for the TAC meeting.  Currently, most documents are located on a secure wiki page with permissions given for the relevant people.  In principle since TTAT understands the permissions it would be useful to have them accessible within the tool.

  • Proposal PDFs.  All TAC members need access to the proposal PDFs for all proposals submitted within the current semester, even proposals for which they are conflicted.  Currently, these are gzip files organized either by telescope or proposal type: Large, GBT, VLA, VLBA, and GMVA.  We need to think about how best to present the proposals to the TAC with TTAT.
  • Facility Documents.  Since time is allocated by each Facility we discuss prop








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