U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
1325 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910-3203
Mr. Barry Lee Myers
Executive Vice President
AccuWeather, Inc.
365 Science Park Road
State College, Pennsylvania 16803
Dear Barry:
Thank you for your letter of April 22, 2003, regarding wireless
Internet access to the National Weather Service (NWS) warning and
forecasts. General Kelly asked me to respond.
Formatting existing NWS products in open, industry-recognized
standards is fully consistent with established Federal government
information policy and the recommendations of the recent National
Research Council (NRC) report "Fair Weather: Effective
Partnershiips in Weather and Climate Services." The Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) and its implementing guidance, OMB
Circular No. A-130, "Management of Federal Information
Resources," set forth the fundamental obligation of government
agencies actively to disseminate taxpayer funded information to
the general public. Circular A-130 states:
Agencies shall use electronic media and formats, including
public networks...in order to make government information
more easily accessible and useful to the public... A basic
purpose of the PRA is to "provice for the dissemination of
public information on a timely basis, on equitable terms,
and in a manner that promotes the utility of the information
to the public and makes effective use of information
technology." (44 U.S.C. 3501(7)) (emphasis added).
The NRC reviewed applicable law and policy, as well as the NWS
mission, and formulated two relevant recommendations which apply
broadly to NWS products and services:
Recommendation 4. The NWS should continue to carry out
activities that are essential to its mission of protecting
life and property and enhancing the national economy,
including collecting data, ensuring their quality, issuing
forecasts, warnings, and advisories; and providing
unrestricted access to publicly funded observations,
analyses, model results, forecasts, and related information
products in a timely manner and at the lowest possible cost
to all users.
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Recommendation 5. the NWS should make its data and products
available in Internet-accessible digital form. Information
held in digital databases should be based on widely
recognized standards, formats, and metadata descriptions to
ensure that the data from different observing platforms,
databases, and models can be integrated and used by all
interested parties in the weather and climate enterprise.
In short, making existing NWS warnings and forecasts available in
a widely accepted open protocol is fully consistent with
established Federal information policy, the NWS mission of
protecting life and property, and the recommendations of the NRC.
An industry group, the Open Mobile Alliance, sponsors Wireless
Applications Protocol (WAP) and describes the protocol as "the de
facto worldwide standard for providing Internet communications
and advanced telephony services on digital mobile phones, pagers,
personal digital assistants and other wireless terminals." We
have automatically formatted existing NWS text products into WAP
and made these products available on two of our web sites - the
Miami Weather Forecast Office (WFO) and the National Hurricane
Center (NHC) - for use by all. These web sites make it clear
existing NWS warnings and forecasts in WAP format are only
available through private sector service providers, e.g., quoting
from the Miami web site:
WFO Miami text products (Zone forecasts and Coastal Waters
forecasts) in both English and Spanish are now available
through some Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled
cellphones and Portable Digital Assistants (PDA).
To view the Wireless WFO Miami home page, you will need a
cellphone or PDA equipped with a WAP browser and an account
with a wireless ISP. Contact a cellphone or wireless PDA
service provider for more information.
WFO Miami and NHC are merely making available to private sector
wireless Internet providers existing NWS products that have been
formatted to display on devices that use WAP.
This early trial of wireless Internet gives NWS valuable
experience. The Office of Management and Budget is leading an
initiative, called "SAFECOM," to provide interoperable wireless
solutions for Federal, state and local public safety
organizations to ensure that they can share information as they
respond. The NWS is helping define requirements for this
government-wide initiative with other government agencies and
industry. As NWS upgrades existing computer systems, the ability
to automatically format data between open formats like HTML, XML,
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WAP and others are already built into the commercial off-the-
shelf applications that come with the computer upgrades. NWS is
developing plans for these upgrades and for our participation in
"SAFECOM," and will follow the principles of the "Fair Weather"
report in seeking comment on these plans.
You have taken my statement to the NRC Committee out of context.
As I stated, NWS is not investing in new infrastructure to take
advantage of wireless services provided by the private sector.
My statement to the NRC was intended to contrast the highly
successful NOAA Weather Radio system, which requires significant
investment of appropriated funds to directly disseminate warnings
and forecasts to the public, with emerging private sector
wireless Internet providers which will disseminate these same
warnings and forecasts to subscribers without significant
investment of taxpayer money on infrastructure which is being
built by the private sector. NWS does nothing more than
automatically format its existing information in an open and
widely accepted Internet standard, leaving it to the private
sector to distribute that information to their subscribers as
they see fit -- a stellar example of the public-private
partnership in action.
In the spirit of the "Fair Weather" report, we are soliciting
public comments on this new wireless Internet capability. Your
letter will be forwarded to the product manager of both the WFO
Miami and NHC web sites to include among the other comments
received. We will carefully consider all comments before making
any decisions regarding continuing or changing this capability.
Your letter asks us to halt this activity. Particularly with the
upcoming hurricane season, it would be irresponsible for NWS to
terminate these services without regard to the comments of others
and deprive wireless Internet users of the ability to access NWS
information critical to their lives and well being. As President
George W. Bush has said, "With preparation, forecasting, and
coordination, we can save lives and improve our Nation's ability
to withstand the impact of hurricanes."
Sincerely,
(signed)
Edward Johnson
Director, Strategic Planning
and Policy
cc: Max Mayfield
Rusty Pfost