Background

The NRAO Telescope Time Allocation Committee (TAC) makes recommendations to the Director 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.  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).  

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 noted below.  The TAC chair runs the meeting with close coordination of a TTA Group member.

1. Introductions/Guidelines.  We start with brief introductions and then a TTA Group member will give a short presentation with some guidelines.  The TAC chair will then add anything they want to emphasize.   A TTA Group 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.  We usually start with the Triggered proposals first.
   
   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 (TAC Meeting Only).  The VLBA scheduler will give a short presentation and then the TAC will begin their deliberations.
3.  Active Large Projects (Large Proposal Meeting Only).  During the Large proposal meeting the TAC will discuss and make recommendations about active Large projects.
4. Joint External Proposals (TAC Meeting Only).  We will review the recommendations for allocating time for these external Facilities (e.g., HST).  For example, check that we are not going over the allotted time available and any issues.
5. Postmortem (TAC Meeting Only).  The TTA Group member who coordinates the TAC meeting together with the relevant ADs will meet with the TAC to discuss any issues.

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 we discuss each Facility separately during the TAC meeting the documents are organized by Facility.  There are two main PDFs.   Currently the GBT has all of this information in one document but there is not reason it could not be put in two documents.
  
  1. 1. Narrative.  This is a short report written by the scheduler that summarizes the proposals and discusses any issues with resources/scheduling.  They always contain a pressure plot which is a LST/GST histogram of the hours requested broken down by scheduling priority, frequency, and weather conditions.  Currently each Facility does this differently with some justification, but it would be useful to make these plots similar.  We should discuss whether the tools should generate the plots or data (e.g, csv file), or both.
     2. Summary.  This lists the proposals in descending order of linear-rank and includes information that has been deemed useful in past meetings.  Currently these are different between the GBT and VLA/VLBA.  We should discuss if these should be the same and if so how we combine the best of both approaches (e.g., here is a proposal).  Currently we generate different versions of these documents (e.g., only Large proposals, only Triggered proposals, etc.).
        
• Active Large Proposal Reports.  Currently a web-based form is used to capture the relevant information and a PDF of all reports is generated.
• Presentations.  There are several presentations given during the TAC meeting that are produced by TTA Group members.

TTA Page: https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/Software/TelescopeTimeAllocation

Notes from whiteboard discussion (5/4/23)

The TAC discusses proposals by

• (large proposal TAC meeting) large proposal, facility, NLR
• (TAC meeting) facility, triggered, and NLR

where facilities are GBT, VLA, VLBA, HSA&GMVA.

The large proposal TAC meeting needs a large proposal focused Pressure Plot and focused a large proposal facility report.

We agreed to two comment boxes

• TAC comments for the PI
  • filled out by TTA members before, during, and after TAC meeting
  • to be reviewed the TAC chair
• Internal comments
  • filled out by TTA members before and during TAC meeting
  • will capture scheduler's comments for the TAC as they determine preliminary scheduling priorities prior to TAC
  • will capture notes during the TAC meeting that may inform the TAC comments for the SRP
  • assume various TTA members will communicate with each other as they edit the comments
  • Note, this is not the same comments as the Internal Comments from the SRP, which belong to the Proposal Review entity

We agreed that Scheduling Priorities should be assigned to a Observation Specification Disposition and NOT the Allocation Disposition.

• There will be a 1-to-1 mapping between Allocation Requests and Allocation Dispositions
• There may not be a 1-to-1 mapping between the OS and the OSDs still.

We need to loop back to a discussion about the Pressure Plots.

Collection of Usecases

As a TAC member, I am representing my panel while the TAC comes to consensus about scheduling priorities, proprietary periods, scheduling constraints, recommended times, and TAC Comments to the PI. The goal as a TAC member is to make recommendations for the Director's Review, not approve the requests; the Director's Review relies heavily on our recommendations. To do this, I need visibility to the entirety of a proposal, even the author list (as long as the Dual Anonymous Review Policies allows it). I also need visibility to all of the SRP Comments, Feasibility Comments, and the TTA member's Comments to the TAC. I need to know what the TTA member (scheduler) recommends (e.g., facility reports, proposal summaries) and how it compares to what the PI requested. There is a lot of information to keep track of here so I need slim, efficient views as well as detailed view. Usually in the TAC meeting, we talk through proposals first by the Large Proposal type, then Regular Proposals. We then order by Facility -  Triggered - Score, so it would be nice if these were easy "preset" filters (or tabs) for me to jump between. Oh, and I'd like to print out the proposals and the reports in case I won't have access to my computer during the meeting.

As a TAC chair, I represent my panel but I also direct the meeting and am responsible for the finalizing the TAC's recommendations. I need to be able to do everything to a normal member does but I also need to be able to make edits to some comments and approve the comments.  Mostly I'll rely on the TTA members at the meeting to keep notes for me but I still need some editing powers.

As a TTA member, I have many hats in during the TAC meeting. I may be taking notes in the Internal Comments or editing TAC comments for PI or even editing SRP Comments for PI. I could also be editing Observation Specification Dispositions on the fly, so I need access to all of the tools I had prior when I was building the ATM and OSDs. I'll likely just use versioning to make my edits, as I expect the information in the facility reports to be static once finalized for the TAC. However, I know I'm going to be preparing more reports for the Director's Review, based on the recommendations of the TAC.