Background
At its annual meeting, held in Beijing (April 26-29,1999), the GOOS Steering Committee (GSC) decided to establish a GOOS Services and Products Bulletin to provide regular and continuous information on the range of products and services associated with GOOS, and to illustrate the point that GOOS is about the construction and operation of an end-to-end data and information management system.

The Bulletin will be managed by an Advisory Board, the members of which will be identify good examples of products which illustrate the workings of GOOS and which accord with the Principles of GOOS.

The sorts of products that we are looking for are:

1. operational products that are considered consistent with and comply to GOOS standards;
2. products from GOOS Pilot Projects which are being developed;
3. products that are related to GOOS, be they operational or experimental.

The bulletin will as far as is possible provide the context (scenarios) within which the products have been developed, and provide attribution to the contributors of the products, identifying the bodies and individuals who are the guardians/providers of the products. Products will be accompanied by pointers to the data and files associated with them. The bulletin will provide a forum for feedback, which should be developed jointly with the data provider.

We would expect the products displayed by the Bulletin to come from such sources as: (i) the GOOS Advisory Panels; (ii) GOOS regional bodies (such as EuroGOOS, NEAR-GOOS, etc); (iii) regional GOOS operations, like TAO and PIRATA, (iv) international programmes like VOS, SOOP, DBCP, GLOSS, etc; (v) GOOS national committees; (vi) national GOOS-like activities; (vii) the IGOSS Electronic Products Bulletin; (viii) the Global Observing Systems Information Centre; (ix) space agencies; and (x) industry, for instance.

Terms of Reference
The Terms of Reference for the Advisory Board are:

1. to establish a Bulletin according to the outline above;
2. to liaise with relevant scientific and technical implementation bodies, including GOOS design panels and JCOMM, especially with respect to standards and quality;
3. to provide analyses of the feedback for the benefit of the GSC;
4. to consider the appropriate media for distribution of the Bulletin;
5. to report to the GSC through the GOOS Project Office (GPO).

Johannes Guddal, of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, will chair the Advisory Board and be Managing Editor of the Bulletin. The Advisory Board is expected to do its business by e-mail. While hard copy may be desirable, it is expensive and impractical to produce, and difficult to distribute effectively. Thus technical production is expected to be primarily on the Internet, initially on the GOOS Web Page, with hard copy considered on a case-by-case basis in response to requests. The GOOS Services and Products Bulletin (GSPB) will contain descriptions of typical products, and so will not be a substitute for the IGOSS Electronic Products Bulletin (IEPB), which generates and displays products in real time. The IGOS EPB is in effect a prototype of an eventual GOOS electronic products bulletin, and over time would be expected to be modified to meet developing GOOS requirements. Selected IEPB products will form part of the GSPB range of products. The GSPB products should illustrate the benefits that an observing system can provide. Those under (b) and (c) above will be pointers to products in the pipeline, so as to build interest by potential users.

Board members will be asked to assist the GPO in the search for extra-budgetary resources to enable the Bulletin to grow and develop.

This new venture is meant to provide a much needed illustration to the world of what GOOS is all about, and what benefits it can bring.