In response to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2002 Program Review Team (PRT) recommendation #32, which addressed centrally planning and integrating NOAA observing systems and indicated a clear need for a NOAA-wide observing system architecture, NOAA established the NOAA Observing Systems Architecture (NOSA) Office and the NOAA Observing Systems Council (NOSC). The NOSA Office is responsible for developing an observational architecture that helps NOAA design observing systems that support NOAA's mission through fulfilling observing requirements, providing maximum value, avoiding unnecessary duplication of existing systems, and operating efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. The NOSC provides policy guidance for observing systems and data management as well as providing oversight of the NOSA Office.

One of the major tasks that evolved out of the establishment of the NOSA effort is development of a more formalized NOAA requirements collection process. The goal is to help ensure future observing systems effectively support the NOAA mission and, where appropriate, the needs of the global user community. The requirements collection process identifies, collects, standardizes, prioritizes, validates, consolidates, and updates NOAA's environmental observing requirements (and, as needed, other users' requirements). These validated requirements for environmental observations will be provided to the NOSA for allocation to programs and then to observational systems. Included within the solutions space will be NOAA internal programs, other Federal government programs, international programs, and commercial programs. The intent is to optimize the entire mix of observing systems against the total set of prioritized user requirements. This process will also help focus NOAA's research and technology initiatives on high-priority user requirements and aid the transition of these initiatives into NOAA operations.