From the GB Corner

By Mayra Oyola

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a major Governing Board (GB) concern was how to support IGS data and products dissemination — especially during the quarantine lockdown periods when people could not access their respective labs and offices due to global COVID-19 mandates. Despite travel and access limitations, the IGS has continued to support all data and product dissemination with no interruptions. On the administrative side, the Central Bureau has worked to ensure effective governance support through regular virtual GB meetings, accommodating for various time zones and technology bandwidths, and adopting a condensed “live” session with additional items for asynchronous “homework.”  Through collective efforts and innovative solutions, this has ensured the completion of the IGS Third Reprocessing Campaign (repro3), which supported the development of the ITRF2020.

During the last year, the GB developed and published the new IGS 2021+ Strategic Plan, and is actively promoting revisions to component Charters that are in alignment with the new IGS Goals and Objectives. Similarly, GB members have led the creation and dissemination of the new formats and guidelines, such as RINEX 4.0, the upcoming GDPR Guidelines for the IGS and the new Guidelines for IGS Real-Time Broadcasters and Stations.

As another step towards achieving objectives of the new Strategic Plan, the GB has established the Committee on Sustainable Working Group Governance, which is currently working on creating new guidelines and policies to improve working group activities and management. GB Members have led an Analysis Center (AC) Capacity Development Study to provide updated and transparent guidance to current and future ACs.

The GB also serves as a driving force to sustain and rebuild for robustness, resilience, and alignment/interoperability of IGS resources with other community resources, evaluate the services that the IGS provides and identify new online tools for the community. In 2021, this led to the development of a new IGS network station individual pages and the new on Site Log Manager “SLM 2.0” which will be available later this year, and whose code will be openly available to everyone in the scientific community.

Despite travel restrictions, we continue to find ways to engage the community, hosting events such as the Tour de l’IGS* a series of virtual mini-workshops on relevant topics to the IGS and the GNSS community in general (current on its way to its fourth installment), as well as the year-end virtual open Associate Member Meeting* (with 150+ participants). Additionally, we have expanded outreach and communications through enhanced social media and communication campaigns, including relevant international celebrations observed by the United Nations.

Finally, GB members continue to represent the IGS and its community interests at various stakeholder levels, including the United Nations International Committee on GNSS (ICG), United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN GGIM)– Subcommittee on Geodesy, World Data System (WDS), International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Inter-Commission Committee on Climate, the IAG Global Geodetic Observing System and many others.

*recordings for these events can be found on the IGS YouTube Channel