The chairman welcomed the participants (see attachment I) and reviewed the agenda (see attachment II). He explained that the main purpose was to discuss the preliminary draft of the Implementation Plan, and to provide comments and suggestions for its finalization.
The draft Implementation Plan was introduced by Michael Gwynne, who prepared it on the basis of the GTOS Planning Group Report and the first meeting of the GTOS Steering Committee, December 1996, Rome. He stressed that, although we have the Planning Group Report, there are many conceptual issues that still need to be defined, e.g. what is GTOS about, what are its priority areas, which activities have to be undertaken in order to make GTOS operational. He suggested that a first priority should be to get existing monitoring networks involved with GTOS, in order to have stations in the field working on specific data requirements. A fundamental requirement is to set up an operational secretariat, with sufficient staffing and resources to provide continuity and efficiency to GTOS activities.
