Effective 1 June, Donald Hobern will assume the post of Deputy Director for Informatics. All of the Secretariat's ICT activities, including designing and developing the new data portal; overseeing GBIF's internal systems, public web servers, and mirror sites; and planning and coordinating develoment of biodiversity information products to be delivered through GBIF's communications and data portals will now be supervised by Donald.

Hannu Saarenmaa will become Senior Advisor to the Director, in which post he will be responsible for providing strategic advice regarding the development and implementation of GBIF campaigns, projects, and other products. Hannu will be working with the Director and the rest of the Secretariat staff to ensure that the GBIF work programme for 2007-2008 takes a user-oriented, value-added approach.

The Secretariat also recently revised the titles and job descriptions of several of our other staff, including Giorgos Ksouris (Senior Software Engineer), Anne Mette Nielsen (ICT Support Manager), Susanne Sheldon (Office Manager and Personal Assistant to the Director), Belinda Skeel (Financial Officer), and Ciprian Vizitiu (Webmaster and Network Administrator). Details can be found at http://www.gbif.org/GBIF_org/gbifs.

These staffing changes are all part of efforts to position the Secretariat to start carrying out the goals and milestones that are articulated in the document "GBIF Plans for 2007-2011", which was approved at GB12. Adjustments may also be made to titles or job descriptions of other staff members, in order to fine-tune our ability to design and implement the 2007-2008 work programme in line with the strategic plan.