The Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS) is expected to be one of the greatest challenges the National Weather Service (NWS) will face in its continual effort to improve the quality of products and services to the public. On one hand, the IFPS will provide a truly unique opportunity for NWS forecasters to use their meteorological skills to focus on developing a digital forecast database for use in a multitude of different ways by a myriad of different people or groups. On the other hand, IFPS is perceived by some forecasters to take away their ability to express their forecast in carefully worded products provided to the public

In order to ensure an orderly transition from current forecast methodologies to focusing on creating a digital forecast database, the Central Region (CR) of the National Weather Service developed an IFPS implementation plan that provides a consistent path for offices to follow. The plan was developed using input from field offices that were involved in IFPS beta testing activities and it establishes well-defined milestones and expected levels of skill to be achieved over an eight month time frame beginning from the time the local office receives their IFPS training.

This presentation will highlight the rationale behind the implementation plan and discuss issues associated with the expected change of forecast culture as forecasters transition from the current forecast process. The potential for providing better and more inclusive kinds of weather products to the public will be presented along with expected problems involving coordination and consistency between local office digital databases. Finally, an overview of the National Digital Forecast Database effort and its relationship to the CR implementation of IFPS will be presented including the potential for private weather services to use the digital databases to better serve their customers.