Contact David Michaud David.Michaud@noaa.gov

The Office of Central Processing is responsible for program and budget planning for, but not limited to, the Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS), the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), hydrology information technology initiatives, and the information technology (IT) infrastructure supporting national centers and field operations and allocating resources to select the best mix of executable programs, projects, and activities. The Office is also the focal point within the Central Processing budget portfolio for portfolio and budget planning, milestone integration and provision of internal controls. The Office is responsible for maintaining an optimum processing systems configuration and an enterprise architecture for processing systems to meet current and future NWS missions requirements, including the strategy for maximizing effectiveness while minimizing operating costs and coordination with the Office of Dissemination. The Office plans and budgets for the end-to-end development, operation, maintenance, and eventual removal of the above systems, and tracks progress against those plans. The Office of Central Processing takes a “systems of systems” approach to establishing a national and regional IT infrastructure from observing system data flow to product generation. As such, the Office provides (1) holistic, on-going assessment and analysis of the processing system and (2) specific recommendations for changes to the configuration of NWS’ processing systems and overall capabilities to maximize the benefit to NWS and its many constituents.