Charter for the Future of Archive Services at Space Telescope (FASST)

Task: To review the possibilities for the direction for the archive over the next 5-10 years, particularly with respect to the ``National'' Virtual Observatory efforts, the Next Generation Space Telescope, legacy Hubble Space Telescope, new space missions, and projects. We will investigate how can we utilize (or combine) existing services and new technologies (such as software agents and/or remote process control protocols) to extend current functionality of the archive and implement new services
to extend it.

The working group will seek answers to the following questions:

What are the main opportunities for the archive on the horizon?
What should the archive do to prepare to take advantage of those opportunities?
Can we identify technologies to be used throughout the archive services at STScI in to allow our separate services to work together?
What is missing from our suite of services?
Where are there duplicate services that can be combined?
How can we best leverage our in-house resources and experience?
What should our priorities be?

Our working group, at the end of its task, should be able to articulate: the big picture goals of the archive that we can see today and the actions we need to take over the next few years to achieve those goals. As an additional goal, we will describe strategies and suggest policies that will inform our development process.

Futher we should recommend common technologies that, once implemented, will enable higher level service integration among the archive services developed here at the institute and at other archives that implement the same services. This will give us both a natural extension to our current services as well as lead to a better understanding of the needs of an NVO.

The group will define the high-level goals of archive services. The group will research and investigate various means of providing such services. One means of investigation will be to invite outside experts to present to us and to be interviewed by us. Members will be expected to do outside reading and research to present to and discuss with the group, as well as actively participate in discussions and interviews.

Expected product will be a white paper describing the results of our research, our projections for the archive, and our recommendations. The co-chairs will make writing assignments, coordinate the writing and collate the drafts. The co-chairs will do a significant amount of the writing, but members will receive writing assignments and
are expected to participate in the revision process.

This group is distinct from the on-going SHARE process, which is focussing on scientific products from the reprocessing pipeline. The SHARE group shares members with the FASST group, so we will minimize overlap in content. The emphasis of the FASST group differs in scope and focus.

Co-chairs: Megan Donahue and Niall Gaffney