Management Board meeting of 2nd October 2003

In the absence of the Director-General, the meeting was chaired by R. Cashmore, Deputy Director-General and Director for Collider Programmes.

Status Report on Earned Value Management (EVM)
J. Ferguson, the EVM Project Leader, informed the Management Board that EVM reporting had now entered a steady phase of operation, with few changes needing to be made to the underlying work-unit data. Since the baseline had been set on 1st September, all modifications were being logged and both budget holders and group coordinators were automatically informed of any resulting impact on cost or schedule. 1500 work units were currently active and being reported on. Work on the contract alignment tool was under way with a view to ensuring that all work units were linked with their milestones in the financial database, thus facilitating exploitation of the data by the Finance Division. The first EVM-based status report to the Finance Committee had been presented at the latter's September meeting, based on the data available as at 1st September, and had been well received. In preparation for the EVM report to be presented to the LHC Cost and Schedule Review Committee at the end of October, he invited division leaders to ensure, in conjunction with the group leaders concerned, that the latest progress was accurately reported in the PPT application.

The LHC Computing Grid (LCG) Project
L. Robertson, the LCG Project Leader, reported on the status of the LHC Computing Grid, a collaboration of the LHC experiments, regional computing centres and physics institutes working together to prepare and deploy the computing environment needed by the experiments to analyse the LHC data. He noted that the scope of the project includes support for applications and the development and operation of a computing service exploiting the resources available to the LHC experiments in computing centres, physics institutes and universities around the world. The first phase of the project will operate a series of prototype services, gradually increasing in scale and complexity, and represents a significant step towards the full-scale computing environment that will ultimately be required by the LHC experiments. The first of these services, known as LCG-1, was opened recently and is due to be in use by the experiments by mid-October.
During his presentation, he provided details of the operational management of the project, the work under way in the applications area, the resources allocated to the project both at CERN and in the regional centres, the current status of work on the LCG-1 service and the planned milestones leading up to the commissioning of the final service ready for the start of data-taking in 2007. Outlining the LCG goals for the coming year, he explained that the priorities would be to have the first versions of the common applications taken up and used by the experiments, a process that was now getting underway, and to test and debug the LCG-1 service ready for validation in the data challenges due to start in spring 2004. The LCG team would also be working with the experiments on the preparation of their computing technical design reports, due to be submitted at the end of 2004.

The EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-science in Europe) Project
F. Gagliardi, the EU DataGrid Project Leader and EGEE Project Coordinator, presented a summary of the objectives, resources and management of the EGEE Integrated Infrastructure Initiative, drawing attention to the close synergy and complementarity with the LCG project. Funded under the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission and involving some 70 institutes, the purpose of the Initiative is to develop a multi-science grid, which will build on the expertise gained with previous EU and national grid initiatives. One of these, the DataGrid project, is the largest EU Grid project to date and has been highly successful, having passed two annual EU reviews as well as "stress tests" with ATLAS and CMS. Moreover, it has been instrumental in promoting grid activity in the CERN Member States.
The original proposal for the EGEE Integrated Infrastructure Initiative was submitted to the EU in May 2003, and negotiations are expected to be completed by the end of October with a view to a start-up of the project in April 2004. The EU DataGrid and DataTAG (TransAtlantic Grid) projects have been extended to this date. Pending the release of EU funds in April 2004, CERN is providing the overall project leadership and administrative support. Initially focussing on particle physics and involving ten different sites with a total storage capacity of 10 Terabytes, the EGEE initiative should gradually evolve over the next four years to encompass several other scientific domains and some 50 sites with a capacity of 10 Petabytes by 2007.
F. Gagliardi explained that the motivation for CERN to propose and coordinate the EGEE project was the potential significant role it could play in alleviating the expected financial shortfall of LCG. The project will receive some 32 million euros in 2004-2005 to deploy an international Grid production infrastructure, which will evolve from the LCG computing infrastructure. Close relations between LCG and EGEE are essential for the success of both projects. LCG will provide EGEE with the production computing infrastructure, while EGEE will invest a considerable amount of funding to evaluate, integrate and re-engineer, as appropriate, the middleware needed by LCG. EGEE will build on the experience of previous Grid projects and on the inputs from the LHC experiments.
In response to D. Schlatter, who asked how the two projects could be coordinated at a managerial level given their different management structures and, in principle, different plans of work, he remarked that the fact that both projects were led by CERN, providing an opportunity to define a programme of work well coordinated between the two projects, was the best guarantee for smooth relations in the future, a consideration that was being kept in mind in the present EGEE negotiations with the EU.
Underlining that the extension of the EGEE grid to a wide range of applications would have important intellectual property implications, J.-A. Rubio observed that the ETT Division would be available to offer the project advice and support in the area of technology transfer.
Following a remark from W. von Rüden, who underlined the difficulties for the recruitment of computing specialists created by the ten-week delay applicable to the opening of posts and enquired about possible exceptions to the rule, the Management Board expressed support for shortening the delay as much as possible and invited W. Zapf to investigate the matter.

Outcome of the September Committee Meetings
Summarising the highlights of the meetings of CERN's governing bodies during the week beginning 15 September, R. Cashmore reported that both the Scientific Policy Committee and Committee of Council had extensively discussed the Organization's future scientific programme, with particular reference to research and development. The Committee of Council had agreed to resume the discussion at its December meeting, taking account of a report and recommendation from the SPC, a report from the working group on the reform of CERN's governing bodies due to be presented at the same meeting and a formal document to be drawn up by the present and future Managements, with a view to deciding the appropriate next steps in the matter.
The Finance Committee had examined the EVM status report by the LHC Project Leader, L. Evans, expressing appreciation for the information provided, and had decided to recommend the Council to approve the 2004 Budget in 2003 prices at its December session.

Follow-up to the Report on Computer Security
W. von Rüden announced that, following the approval at the Management Board's August meeting of measures designed to improve computer security at CERN, including the enforcement of hardware address registration for all on-site computers using DHCP, the IT Division had completed the development of the required tools. These include a new request and approval procedure for laptops not yet registered in the network database. Enforcement, which has already begun in buildings 31, 513 and 600, will be introduced gradually over the coming weeks and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Short-term visitors without a computer account at CERN also need to register, subject to approval by a CERN contact person. A description of the new procedures can be found at http://it-div.web.cern.ch/it-div/gencomputing/VisitorPortables.asp. Users are requested to ensure that up-to-date anti-virus software with live updates and applicable security patches are installed on their computers. Network access will be restricted to registered computers and, to prevent virus propagation, denied to any that are found to be vulnerable or infected. After a trial period, mandatory registration will be gradually extended to the whole CERN site.
In the framework of the recently approved security measures, he also invited division leaders to appoint persons who could be contacted in the event of security alerts.

Study of Careers in Professional Category 5b
The Leader of HR Division, W. Zapf, reminded the Management Board that some 100 female staff members belonging to Category 5b had sent a petition to the Equal Opportunities Advisory Panel in 2001, alleging an imbalance in the recruitment, advancement and promotion practice applied to office and administrative staff compared to technical staff in Category 3. Following the presentation of a report by the EOAP to the Management Board and Standing Concertation Committee in 2002, an HR Division study group had been set up to examine practices in those areas both at CERN and in other international organizations with a scientific or technical vocation. The results of their survey had been presented to the Standing Concertation Committee at its meeting earlier that week. While concluding that certain complaints were well founded, the study group had discovered similar overall salary and career progression at CERN in the two professional categories. However, it had recommended that the opportunities for developing specific administrative skills through appropriate training and development measures be fully exploited.
It was agreed that the report would be circulated to the members of the Management Board and discussed at its next meeting before being forwarded to the signatories of the petition.

Ratio of Limited Duration Contracts to Indefinite Contracts
W. Zapf reported that the HR Division was satisfied with divisions' compliance with the ceiling on the number of indefinite contracts in the various professional categories that had been set in spring 2003. However, a need to adjust the ceiling figures in the case of internal transfers of staff on indefinite contracts had been identified. It was agreed to change the divisional/sectorial ceiling figures where such transfers took place with post.

Local Staff Recruitment
Finally, following remarks from P. Ciriani regarding the availability of suitably qualified external candidates for LS vacancies, W. Zapf observed that more than 400 applications had been received for the over 80 positions published. He invited divisions to inform the HR Division of any areas where difficulties were being encountered. It was agreed that the matter would be examined at the Human Resources Review Board the following week.