As many of you know, I am the Chair of a Working Group (WG) on UTC for the International Union of Radio Scientists (URSI). Several years ago I distributed a questionnaire as the chair of a similar committee of URSI Commission J.
My WG is considering sending the following questionnaire to URSI-members. The intent is to find out what the true costs would be if UTC is redefined so that there are no new leap seconds after N years, and what the costs would be of continuing with the same UTC definition we have now. I would be interested in your comments, given the scope of the questionnaire and my limited charter. To my knowledge, very few of you are URSI members and therefore you will not be asked this question by my WG. However I predict that any information along the lines of the questionnaire would be received with interest by the points of contact in any of the other relevant international bodies to which you may belong. Demetrios Matsakis **************************************************************************** ******** 1. Name and Position 2. Contact information 3. URSI Commissions of which you are a member 4. If it were decided to change the definition of UTC so that no leap seconds would be inserted after a specified date, 5 years in the future, would any extra effort be required to adjust any system you work on? 5. If your answer to question 4 is yes, for each system affected please provide the information in 5a through 5h. If these estimates are be difficult to formulate, you may wish to indicate the range of answers. Please feel free to contact a member of the Working Group to discuss the level of detail to provide so as to best help us represent your needs to URSI. a. Name of system b. Brief description of system c. Hours of extra labor that would be required and for what general purpose, such as a software review. d. Extra equipment that must be purchased, and approximate cost to purchase e. Extra equipment that must be developed, and approximate cost. f. Installation cost of extra equipment g. Risks involved in modifying the system. h. Costs in terms of system performance or final product once the adjustments are correctly made 6. If the decision were made to insert no new leap seconds as of today, please indicate which of your responses to questions and 4 and 5 would be different. 7. Is there an implementation date that would significantly decrease the costs indicated in your response to question 5? If so, please provide the data and associated costs. 8. Please provide the approximate cost to your systems of incorporating the next leap second, should one be called for in the year 2003. a. Hours of labor b. Equipment purchase c. Probability that leap second will not be correctly adjusted for d. Costs in terms of final product or system performance if the leap second is not correctly included e. Costs in terms of final product or system performance even if the leap second is correctly allowed for. 9. Please use this space to make any comments or provide any information you feel appropriate. 10. It is possible that we would like to publicly identify your system(s) as relevant to the decision. In that case, do we have your permission to fully quote your reply?