Dear Colleague,
 
I am writing to you because you have been identified as a principal
contact for a US facility/project in radio and submillimeter
astronomy (see the attachment for the tentative contact list). Please let me
know if you are not the appropriate contact.
 
As you are probably already aware, the Astronomy Division at the NSF
plans to hold a senior review of its portfolio in the next 6-9 months
as part of its mid- and long-range planning activities.
In September, in my then capacity as AUI Board chair, I suggested
that AUI, on behalf of the entire US radio community, sponsor a broad
based activity to provide input into the NSF strategic planning
exercise. Since the OIR community began a similar exercise last
spring under NOAO (see http://www.noao.edu/dir/lrplan/lrp-committee.html),
various members of the radio community felt it important to engage
a small committee to review the current status of progress towards
implementation of the recommendations of the 2000 Astronomy and
Astrophysics Survey Committee in the fields of radio and submillimeter
astronomy. In the meantime, the NSF has endorsed such an effort and
has provided information on its context as a mechanism for community
dialogue within the NSF strategic planning exercise.
 
AUI has now convened such a group and has offered to provide
limited logistical support for its activities. Because time and
funding for this activity is limited and in order to insure the
broadest representation, we decided to call upon the same individuals
who participated in the NRC 2000 AASC panel on radio and
submillimeter astronomy and were authors of its report. However,
the current effort is not sponsored by the NRC;  rather, the
so-called "2005 Ground Based Radio and Submillimeter Astronomy Planning
Group" has been convened by AUI, on behalf of the community.
 
It is obviously of concern to all of us that this exercise have
the benefit of broad radio and submillimeter community involvement and
that our activities be known and understood to all interested parties.
Significant communication is required, despite strong constraints
on time and money. We will do our best to explain ourselves and to
remain sensitive to the broad and diverse community needs. Please note
that we currently do not have the resources to hold town meetings,
project presentations and the like. This exercise is **not** of the
same scale and scope as the Decadal Survey review. Therefore, we
really need your help both in providing us with input in a form we
can digest and also in disseminating understanding of our efforts
to your colleagues and user communities.

At present, we have had one kickoff telecon and are in the process of
laying out our plan for preparing a brief report that provides
community perspective to the NSF AST senior review process. To aid
both in our own exchange and with communicating with you and the rest of
the US radio and submillimeter community, we are making use of a
website which you are invited to visit:
   http://www.astro.cornell.edu/~haynes/rmspg
 
In order to facilitate our process at its present stage, we have some
initial requests for useful input materials, details attached, to you as
director/leader of a US radio/submillimeter project/facility. We
recognize that some items might be easily provided while other information
may need to be gathered specifically for this task;  please try to
provide the information in the form that you believe would be most
valuable to us in the context of this planning group exercise.
We'd appreciate your providing us with URLs to documentation rather than
sending us long documents themselves. It would also be useful if you
could provide the answers back following the outline below.
Specificity/brevity will be most appreciated. We thank you in advance
for the extra effort that will require!
                                                                
If you have comments or suggests as to this process and our
activities, please feel free to contact any member of the planning
group. We look forward to an informative exchange in this community
effort.                                                                   
                                      
Best regards,         
                                      
Martha Haynes, on behalf of the
2005 Radio and Submillimeter Planning Group