Last Tuesday I was at a workshop on GEO in Washington. It was billed as A Roundtable Discussion on Advancements in Information Technology and the Next Ten Years of the Global Earth Observation System of System, but the main objective was to discuss the private sector participation in GEOSS.

Despite this, the majority of attendees were public sector representatives and, without counting, there would have been about 10 private sector people present out of around 40 in total of which we were 4 from Europe. A similar meeting called by the EC last September has attracted an audience of around 80 people with 25 from the private sector; none from the US.

Clearly, bringing private sector interests together into GEO/GEOSS will be a complex matter given the diversity of interest, the different understanding of what “private-sector” means and particularly its international nature. It is hard to imagine US companies traveling to Europe and vice versa or elsewhere in the world without a strong motivation.

It seemed that, amongst the US companies, there is a similar lack of understanding of what GEO is and what its objectives are, as had been the case for those in Europe at the EC meeting. There was a very patchy appreciation of how GEO could help the private sector and vice-versa. This was certainly picked up by the US-GEO organisers who concluded that GEO needs to employ some communication specialists.

Nevertheless, overall, many of the conclusions were the same;

• Avoid competition between GEO and private companies
• Reach out to users to understand what they want
• Who are the “users” of GEOSS?
• GEOSS can be a conduit from EO providers of data and information towards the public sector stakeholders.
• Need to get more than just scientists involved in the service provision.

In discussion, we agreed that the users of GEOSS are the public sector stakeholders, but the world has changed greatly since GEO was founded (in 2003) and the impression remains that, today, its stakeholders have divergent ambitions for what it should become. As industry, we should start to become clearer in what we should like GEO to do and especially how the public and private sectors can engage in a global context.

Last Monday, I was at the information (half) day organised by ECMWF regarding the procurement of the atmosphere and climate services for Copernicus. I wish to thank them for organising this event and making the effort to promote and explain the procurement process.

Most will be aware that at EARSC, we have been promoting the necessity to involve industry as much as possible in the supply chain for the services. Today, the level varies widely between the Land services where there is a good industrial participation and others particularly the atmosphere, climate and marine where industry has not been really involved. Our goal is to change this recognising on the one hand that there are competences in industry that can and should be employed whilst there are capacities which only public bodies such as ECMWF can supply. This applies to all the Copernicus services and it is clear from the large number of meetings being planned already that we shall need a co-ordinated approach.

We seek to develop a partnership where the “optimum” arrangement can be deployed combining the strengths of industry with public bodies. Hence when ECMWF first contacted me at the end of last year, I was delighted to discuss with him how we could start to develop this arrangement. The information day was a very important first step and we now will work out how to establish a roadmap between the public and private sectors.

Mercator Ocean have also contacted me and I have now had 2 meetings with them to discuss the way forward. Their approach is different and a web-x presentation took place last Friday to start to explain their plans. Again we welcome this and the plans for future meeting s which bring transparency and opportunity to the process.

The discussions will not be limited to short term actions but must embrace planned R&D as well as promotional activities. The plan must show how to evolve from the current situation to one where a greater industry involvement becomes possible and perhaps even more importantly a stronger competitive landscape to ensure good value for the public sector and innovation in the private sector.

I very much hope that all the other EEE’s will follow a similar approach and look forward to discussing with them in the near future.