AFTERWORD Town Meeting 2002

• Ideally, a 5-Year Plan should include the following categories:

• • Maintenance & Operation of existing facilities and programs.
  • Construction & Commissioning of completed engineering designs.
  • Engineering Design of new facilities chosen by thorough evaluations.
  • Concept Evaluation: Comparison of scientific potential, technical feasibility and probable cost of competing proposals for new facilities.

• Traditionally the final category has been relegated to semi-democratic processes such as TUG AGMs, Town Meetings and the prior efforts of self-organized groups of Users. While new initiatives must always have “grass roots” origins, these partisan efforts must evaluated and compared much more thoroughly than is possible in a year or two before each 5-Year Plan. A step is missing.

• I therefore proposed (in 2002) that TRIUMF create a standing LRPC to fulfill this role. This body would receive proposals asynchronously and review them full time, thus alleviating the “Communication Bottleneck” .

• 2005 : Communication Task Group recommends creative use of Web-based tools (databases, interactive forms, wikis etc.) to facilitate User INPUT.