Senate Bill S.786 could kill NWS internet weather products

Follow up:

Here, is the bill,
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:s786:

and below is the Commercial Weather Services Association's press
release advocating passage of the bill. I'll just point out one of
the many duplicities in the press release. Note the particular
paragraph that reads, "This will mandate that the public, including
users like pilots, boaters and farmers, and the private sector, will
all have unrestricted real-time access to government information."
What the press release doesn't disclose is that, under the bill, this
"unrestricted real-time access" will be through a set of data portals
designed for volume access by commercial providers of products or
services. In other words, the data would be in a form that would be
essentially useless to the lay public, including pilots. The
non-competition clause of the bill would likely kill any user-friendly
Internet weather presentations by the NWS if similar presentations
were available commercially on the Internet.

--------------------------
Commercial Weather Services Association Says S.B. 786 Assures Both
Public and Industry Access

April 29, 2005 - The Commercial Weather Services Association (CWSA)
announced today its support for Senate Bill 786, "The National Weather
Services Duties Act of 2005." S.B. 786, one of three related bills
now before Congress, will benefit both the public and the private
sector.

The new legislation would require the National Weather Service (NWS)
to distribute government generated weather information "in real-time,
and without delay . . . in a manner that ensures that all members of
the public have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access." No
such requirement currently exists.

This will mandate that the public, including users like pilots,
boaters and farmers, and the private sector, will
all have unrestricted real-time access to government information.

The bill will also update the 115-year-old mission of the NWS to fit
within the American weather framework of today, in which both the
agency and the Commercial Weather Industry now play important parts in
providing weather products, services, systems, networks and
communications to the nation.

"Through more than 55 years of innovation by the Commercial Weather
Industry and a policy of free and open exchange of government
information, the American public has become the beneficiary of the
best
weather information available anywhere in the world," said Steven
Root, President of the Commercial Weather Services Association (CWSA).
"Unfortunately, the performance of the National Weather Service in
fulfilling its key tasks of collecting and disseminating government
information has not always kept pace with public and private needs and
critical information the agency possesses is not always reaching the
public in time."

CWSA has noticed an increasing number of occurrences where the NWS has
not provided timely, key information during hurricanes, floods, and
severe snowstorms, exposing the public to heightened and serious
danger. Just as alarming, this key information was not made available
to the public or the Commercial Weather Industry including the media.
Such delayed or missing information has included real-time cooperative
observer and snow intensity reports delayed up to twelve hours during
a blizzard, hurricane
reconnaissance reports delayed during an intensifying storm, and
missed flood warnings.

S.B. 786 will provide for better information and warnings to the
public by requiring NWS to focus on a defined core mission and adhere
to its own non-competition/non-duplication policy, which NWS has had
in effect, in one form or another, for over 55 years. The National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), the parent organization of the NWS, unilaterally repealed this
policy in December 2004. This NOAA action is not in accord with
long-standing government policies and programs designed to encourage
private-sector investment and development of products, services,
systems, networks, and communications facilities beneficial to the
nation. Root added, "Government duplication of existing products and
services readily available from the private sector is unnecessary and
detracts from the NWS mission of saving lives and property."

The result of the December repeal has been a growing uncertainty and
risk for private sector firms engaged in the weather enterprise and
threats to jobs throughout the industry. Accordingly, this NOAA
action also endangers the very existence of free weather information
to the public, an estimated 95% of which comes from the Commercial
Weather Industry including the media.

The bill requires the Secretary of Commerce, which directs and
controls the operations of NOAA and NWS, to determine what those
competitive and duplicative activities are and requires oversight
reports to Congress. The bill does not target any particular
government activity for elimination.

S.B. 786 endorses the concept of encouraging private-sector activities
and investment, rather than government expenditures, in the American
weather sector, a principle that was jointly adopted with bipartisan
support in both the House and Senate in November 2004 as part of the
appropriations legislation funding the National Weather Service
(Conference Report to H.R. 481 . The non-duplication provision of S.B.
786 is also in line with NWS's prior policy and the philosophy of
national policies on space transportation and other government
activities.

"CWSA believes that the public safety and well-being of the nation
would best be served by NWS concentrating on its long-standing and
critical core missions including disseminating government-generated
weather information and issuing severe weather warnings for the
protection of life and property of the public.

The NWS is the only source of official government weather warnings,
government data and computer models, all relied upon by numerous users
in government, industry and the public," said Root. "Activities that
shift the NWS focus away from this mission by duplicating products,
services, systems, networks and communications that are already widely
available from the private sector, many free to the public, do not
represent appropriate stewardship of public funds."

S.B. 786 was introduced April 14, 2005 by Senator Rick Santorum
(R-PA). It is one of three bills currently before Congress that would
reexamine and redefine the structure and mission of the National
Weather Service and its parent NOAA.

About the Commercial Weather Services Association

The Commercial Weather Services Association is the trade association
for professionals who make weather their business. Its members
collect, interpret and disseminate weather information to
weather-sensitive
businesses as well as the general public. In addition, CWSA members
engineer a variety of hardware and software systems, including weather
sensors and meteorological workstations and operate weather
information networks.

For more information about the Commercial Weather Services
Association, please visit:
www.weatherindustry.org

George Patterson wrote:
Matt Whiting wrote:


I think if most "public" services were provided by a free enterprise
system, then we'd get a lot more in aggregate for our money.


I disagree. I remember when the Weather Station first came out, they had
very frequent local reports and paging of text weather of various cities
every 20 minutes or so. Also had some aviation weather, as I recall.

Then they started attracting advertisers. The pilot weather was gone the
next time I saw a report. By 1995, the local cable companies had
replaced the local weather reports with their own ads. TWS corrected
that a few years later by announcing that the local weather would be
displayed every 10 minutes (on the 8s). That forced the cable companies
to play it.

Basically, if you need something special and are perceived to be a
minority, private enterprise will cut you right out of the picture. If
weather info is provided only by private enterprise, we won't have pilot
weather unless something like AOPA provides it for us.

Yes, that is why I said in aggregate. We overall have much better
weather services today than we had 30 years ago when it was nearly all
government provided. I didn't say that aviation would be better off.
Actually, my point is that aviation is very heavily subsidized and would
likely take it on the chin without such subsidies.

Government is very wasteful, but it does provide for the special
interests in a manner that wouldn't exist were everything based on a
"pay as you use" basis. In the end it might work out OK, but it
certainly would look a lot different. I wouldn't pay school taxes if I
didn't have kids in school, but I'd probably pay $10/gallon for avgas,
if it was even available, and I'd pay for weather briefings, use of ATC,
use of GPS, etc.

Matt

I wouldn't pay school taxes if I didn't have kids in school

It is in your best interests that other people's children are well educated.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

At our city-owned/operated airport we have available a commercial
weather product (I can't recall the name but it is one that is commonly
found at FBOs) that I find useful when I am there to use it. But I
also use the NWS-generated ADDS Aviation Weather and IMHO it is First
Class and a damn fine example of the government "getting it right" (a
refreshing anomoly).
Of the possibility that AccuWeather's Michael Steinberg could be
(speaking) in a self-serving manner should be a given and the weight of
his "arguments" assigned a big fat zero.

Sid Knox

FlyBoy wrote:
As a private pilot, I make frequent use of the NWS's Aviation Digital
Data Service (see 1). I especially like their "Java Tools" graphic
presentations of METAR, TAF, and AIR/SIGMET data. Senate Bill S. 786
(see 2) could well kill such NWS weather presentations in favor of
private sector subscription or advertisement supported Internet
weather services. AccuWeather.com has been a vocal proponent of this
bill. The Senator sponsoring this bill is from AccuWeather's home
state.

I have been arguing the case against this bill with AccuWeather's
Michael Steinberg in an online forum on ipetitions.com (see 3). If
any of my fellow pilots wish to add their voice to the discussion, I
would appreciate it. I must admit that I have reached the limit of
my
patience with Michael Steinberg, who characterizes my views as "a
bunch of distortions at best". I believe that I have presented an
accurate interpretation of the likely effects of this bill and I also
believe that any "distortions" in the forum largely originate with
AccuWeather's Michael Steinberg. I urge those who care about this
issue to sign the online petition, join the online forum, and write
their own senators with their opinions of this bill.

1: NWS ADDS: http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/
2: S. 786: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:s786:
3: http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/SaveTheNWS/

FlyBoy

Government is very wasteful, but it does provide for the special interests
in a manner that wouldn't exist were everything based on a "pay as you
use" basis.

Ah, but if EVERYTHING were pay as you go, then they might exist because we
could afford to pay.

In the end it might work out OK, but it
certainly would look a lot different. I wouldn't pay school taxes if I
didn't have kids in school, but I'd probably pay $10/gallon for avgas, if
it was even available, and I'd pay for weather briefings, use of ATC, use
of GPS, etc.


Exactly! Because we are not "pay as you go", whenever you take out one
item and say it is "sunsidized" and we should be grateful for the
government, you are falling for a fallacy. The existing system has us all
standing with our hands out after they take so much taxes.

"FlyBoy" wrote in message ...


Follow up:

Here, is the bill,
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:s786:



Why don't your links work for me?

"Blueskies" wrote:

Why don't your links work for me?


I don't know. They work for me in Mozilla, Firefox, and Internet
Explorer. I did notice that ipetitions.com was down for a few hours
yesterday. For the record, here are all the links I referenced:

1: NWS ADDS: http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/
2: S. 786: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:s786:
3: http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/SaveTheNWS/

Matt Whiting wrote:
Blueskies wrote:




This could end up like things in Russia. Public money funded
resources are deemed too inefficient to be run by the
government, so the assets are put up for bid to private companies.
The private company acquires the asset, and then
sells the service to the public.Very bad idea for the NWS, very
bad idea for our freeways, very bad idea for our
airways...

I'm not sure it is all that bad. I think if most "public" services
were
provided by a free enterprise system, then we'd get a lot more in
aggregate for our money.

Probably so for some services, I dunno about most. In the instant
case, it is not feasible for private concerns to operate the weather
bureau infrastructure, inclusing constellations of weather satellites
and so on. There is also a need for consistant (preferably high)
quality and availabllity from the standpoint of public saftey.

The proposal would not significantly reduce the goernment's costs,
but would significantly reduce the public benefit. Not good.

A similar program during the Reagan era privatized much of the
Landsat data, after the Governement had paid for the programs
to obtain and archive it. The result was that it was priced
beyond reach of a lot of researchers. Oil companies could
afford it though.


It all comes down to what is less costly, the waste in government or
the
profit margin that a private enterprise would require. If the
private
enterprise is efficient enough that it can make a profit and still
cost
less than a government agency, then it is a good deal overall.


Not in the instant case. The government would still have all
the expense of operating a weather service--then a private concern
would get to sell the fruits of that tax money. E.g. Corporate
Welfare without even the meager benefits that something like a
subsidized sports stadium brings a community.

The proper and effective way to privatize services of this sort
is to put the operational support for the service up for competative
bidding by prospective contractors and NOT by privatizing the data
themselves.

--

FF

wrote in message
ups.com...

In the instant
case, it is not feasible for private concerns to operate the weather
bureau infrastructure, inclusing constellations of weather satellites
and so on.

Oh, like the constellation of communications satellites? And the broadcast
groups?

There is also a need for consistant (preferably high)
quality and availabllity from the standpoint of public saftey.

So you rely on government bureaucrats to provide that?

These are much the same people as run the Postal Disservice and Amtrak.


The proposal would not significantly reduce the goernment's costs,
but would significantly reduce the public benefit. Not good.

Yeah..corporations give us all our comforts and prosperity, but they could
do that.

Get a clue!!

"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
ups.com...

In the instant
case, it is not feasible for private concerns to operate the weather
bureau infrastructure, inclusing constellations of weather satellites
and so on.

Oh, like the constellation of communications satellites? And the broadcast
groups?

There is also a need for consistant (preferably high)
quality and availabllity from the standpoint of public saftey.

So you rely on government bureaucrats to provide that?

These are much the same people as run the Postal Disservice and Amtrak.


The proposal would not significantly reduce the goernment's costs,
but would significantly reduce the public benefit. Not good.

Yeah..corporations give us all our comforts and prosperity, but they could
do that.

Get a clue!!



C'mon Matt. You are overboard here. First of all, the USPS was, IMHO, much
better at providing services before it was made into its present "corporate
form". Even if it was expensive, you could stand on solid ground when you
said you mailed something to someone, and they should have gotten it. Not
so anymore, no matter what the IRS says.

Second, both examples are more like what would be created by this bill, not
what we have now. Semi-privatization just don't fly.

Lastly, the argument that is made here is both valid, reasonable, and should
be a litmus test for privatization or outsourcing. What this bill does is
not really either privatization or outsourcing anyway.

If the NWS is not up to the level of quality desired by the market, then why
do the private services need the NWS data? IOW, why are there not self
contained services ready to go? The problem this bill would address is one
where the fine cheese makers cannot sell cheese because the government is
giving it away. That would be a good argument except that in this case, the
government will still be making the cheese and the cheesemakers wil just
become profitable distributors.

No, there is a need for better packaging, delivery, and interpretation.
There are many services that perform these functions but they often use
government sources along with private ones to make their predictions and
build their products. They make money only where they can add value. Giving
up a lot of benefit for little reward is not something the taxpayers should
do just in the name of free markets. We first need to be convinced the free
market will be better and more efficient. IOW, we need to know that the
satellites and other infracstructure will be replaced by the private sector
instead of the private sector simply siphoning off some profit and leaving
when the free cheese runs out.