[CMC] Re: "Consensus technical agreement of the participating CCSDS Member Agencies"

Wed Feb 1 20:08:10 EST 2012

Dear Adrian,

Thank you for your pondered comments in your attached message. In my 
opinion, an objective result from the very intensive exchange of related 
e-mails you were involved with in the last three days or so, and that I could 
follow up in Cc. due to my natural involvement with ISO TC20/SC13 
Subcommittee. 

Therefore, as a natural testimony I could very much appreciate your 
consistent and remarkably pondered, well-balanced and prudent responses 
to what I consider to have been an unfair, unprecise, unbalanced and 
gratuitous aggressiveness in the series of addressings you received, clearly 
observable in a notable segment of the mentioned correspondence.

In consideration to your questioning:

My question to you - and the CMC - is as follows: should it be a requirement that any RID submitted from a non-Agency source must come from an organization that has declared an affiliation with CCSDS, either as an Associate or as a Liaison?

In my position, I wish to express my opinion under the five following points,
which I also submit for consideration by the CCSDS-CMC, for discussion 
and for a desirable, conclusive decision and resulting ruling, in the best 
possible, short term:

1. CCSDS is sovereign to develop Recommendations that are decided to be
tackled, as a result of the consensus that the Committee is used practice,
in a combined effort at technical and mangement levels. Not to mention its
ties with IOAG, which also play an important role in this process.

2. Since its inception, ISO TC20/SC13 Subcommittee is authtorized before
ISO to act under the Cover Sheet process with the CCSDS originated 
publications, as applicable.

3. I would understand that an -external- liaison member is, in principle, 
naturally welcome to join the regular, consensus based, review process of 
a product under development by a CCSDS WG to which he/she in his/her 
liaison role is associated to as a, at least, potential contributor, limited 
to the liaison person, him or herself. 

4. Although I am not aware at the moment on the details of the CCSDS 
"modus-operandi" in respect to Associates, I see, in principle, no limitation 
that would preclude one or more Associates to contribute in the review 
process of a CCSDS WG -specific- (therefore, case-by-case) product, 
should it or them be formaly invited, under clear pre-established conditions, 
by CCSDS, to do so. If a formal invitation is circumvented in such a case, 
it may disturb in different degrees of perturbation, the internal WG product 
development process. Such a formal, external participation would have to 
be approved by CCSDS CMC.

5. Under the same principle of the immediately previous item,  I see, in 
principle, no limitation that would preclude that CCSDS & ISO TC20/SC13
may issue a combined MOU or like, with an ISO standardization body,
under clear pre-established conditions by CCSDS, that would state a 
formal invitation (and vice-versa, from/) to the external body, for a 
contribution to the review process of a CCSDS WG -specific- (case-by-
case) product. Again, if a formal invitation of this type is circumvented, 
under premises of an informal cooperation, it may disturb in different 
degrees of perturbation, the internal WG product development process.
Such a formal, external participation would have to be approved by CCSDS 
CMC and endorsed by ISO TC20/SC13.

Thanmk you for your contribution to this pendence.

With my best regards,
Eduardo

Cc. 
- CCSDS Management Council (CMC)
- David S. Berry, Chairman CCSDS/CESG/MOIMS-NAV WG

__________________________________________________________________

From: Hooke, Adrian J (9000) 
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 1:54 PM
To: Eduardo Bergamini 
Cc: CCSDS Management Council ; CESG ; Berry, David S (3430) 
Subject: "Consensus technical agreement of the participating CCSDS Member Agencies"

Eduardo: as you are well aware, we are having some issues with the Liaison between SC14 and the CCSDS Navigation working group in the context of the Conjunction Data Message (CDM). In this case, the SC14 Liaison - Dr. Finkleman - has taken on the task of getting the document reviewed by a wide outside community, including ""those who operate the nearly 300 subscribing satellites" (his quote). Unfortunately, we have very little direct contact with that constituency, and Dr. Finkleman has so far refused to reveal who they are or allow us to have direct contact with them. He is also complaining that our CDM development schedule (agreed to by the Navigation WG) is too aggressive for him to gather comments from the outside users. Without positive contact with those users, we have no way of knowing whether or not that claim is true.

A concern has arisen about the CCSDS boilerplate, which says:

"This document has been approved for publication by the Management Council of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) and represents the consensus technical agreement of the participating CCSDS Member Agencies. The procedure for review and authorization of CCSDS Recommendations is detailed in the Procedures Manual for the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, and the record of Agency participation in the authorization of this document can be obtained from the CCSDS Secretariat at the address below."

That implies that the CDM standard, when published, only represents the views of the CCSDS Agencies. Implicit in that statement is that CCSDS Observer and CCSDS Associate members also agree to its contents, since they are alerted to all review and are invited to comment. However, in the case of the CDM we are accepting RIDs from outside users (filtered via the SC14 Liaison) that come from unattributed sources who are neither Associates nor Liaisons. In fact, Dr. Finkleman's own home organization http://www.centerforspace.com/aboutus/ has not even bothered to register as an Associate (see http://public.ccsds.org/participation/associates.aspx). 

There is some indication that when the CDM gets sent to ISO, an attempt will be made to declare that the CDM "only" represents the views of space Agencies, and that therefore another ISO standard development needs to be initiated (presumably by SC14) to produce a CDM that represents the views of external organizations. This would in effect be a "standards war" that would confuse the community and delay the adoption of the CDM, and we need to do everything in our power to head it off.

One possibility is to require that every outside organization that contributes RIDs to a CCSDS document must have some form of official "standing" within CCSDS, either as an Associate or as a Liaison. In the case of the CDM, that could probably be accomplished quite simply, by inviting Dr. Finkleman's home organization (CSSI) as well as the Satellite Data Association http://www.space-data.org/sda/ to become CCSDS Associates.

My question to you - and the CMC - is as follows: should it be a requirement that any RID submitted from a non-Agency source must come from an organization that has declared an affiliation with CCSDS, either as an Associate or as a Liaison?

Best regards

Adrian

Adrian J. Hooke
Chairman, CCSDS Engineering Steering Group

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