Description:

NOAA, through its various initiatives and product development teams, has been practicing community and sectoral engagement for decades. Recent work to describe this work as a process that moves from engaging with communities to gathering user needs information, and ultimately how to incorporate user needs strategically throughout NOAA is at the heart of this transformation. It is recognized that a seamless enterprise of engagement, needs identification, and product development will help us to: improve actions/decisions with respect to our environment; keep people safe; shape our science to be actionable, useful, and used; improve understanding of the value of our science, and improve the application of our research to societal needs.

Incorporating user needs information throughout the stages of NOAA’s business from research to operational service delivery is a culture change. This session will bring together panelists on the key aspects of what engagement with communities and end-users means, the key steps of engagement processes, and key aspects of how to interpret user needs to enable NOAA to improve science and services.