Reporting Requirements
As a matter of government policy, all U.S. Department of Energy user facilities, including the ARM Climate Research Facility, have a number of reporting requirements. The Facility is required to report to the DOE ARM Program Director, to the DOE's Office of Biological and Environmental Research, and to the White House Office of Management and Budget. A primary requirement for ARM is the documentation of new users. New users for this purpose are defined as first-time visitors to any of the ARM sites. The category of new users also includes new data users at the Archive or any of the local site data systems. In addition, a separate accounting of users that log into the educational program is documented.
The main performance measure for site operations is the data availability for each instrument at each site. The Operations Manager is responsible for keeping the instruments operating as continuously as possible and keeping the data flowing to the Data Archive, where the data and metadata are eventually made available to users. The Data Quality Office is responsible for data usability, making sure that the data is of known and reasonable quality. The Data Quality Office routinely provides rigorous data quality checks and reports problems to the Operations Manager. These problems are resolved as quickly as possible and the causes and solutions to the problems are documented to help prevent any future data loss.
The Archive is the repository of all ARM data and all user facility data. The Archive Manager is responsible for user data accessibility. The ARM Communications Team reports on the scientific results and successes of new and existing facility users and the development and growth of the climate research facility.
