b'One of the main challenges I encountered when I became the NWS director in 2013was that we didnt have a working governance structure, which had caused some fairly complicated budget management issues. My first goal was to fix this problem. We developed a new governance structure that mirrors our forecast process, hired a new management team, and implemented a new budget process that maps to our main portfolio areas. Dr. Louis W. Uccelliniacross federal, state, local, and tribal levels of government.of data; sharing, distributing, and communicating data, While we dont provide IDSS to the public, we are workinginformation, forecasts and warnings; improving the suite of with the enterprise to simplify and better communicate ourobservations used in our models; improving the situational forecasts and warnings so they are more understandableawareness of our forecasters, including crowdsourcing; and and actionable. improving our understanding of how to use new predictive analytics to improve our forecasts, as well as artificial The only way to understand what our partners do, we needintelligence to assist forecasters in providing decision to be at their table-top exercises. We have to practice withsupport. We seek partnerships throughout the modeling them. We cant show up just before a weather event andcommunity to build and improve our modeling suite and say, okay, Im here, what do you need? We need to beimprove research to operations.involved. They need to understand we cant give them a perfect forecast. The longer out in time, the less accurate the forecast. We build a trusted relationship by engaging in these exercises and that relationship flows both ways.To learn more about the National Weather Service,There is a personal and professional stake involved here.go to weather.gov.For example, the storm in Taylorville, Illinois, on December 1, 2018, we forecasted a tornadic outbreak that likely couldTo hear the interviews from The Business of Government Hour, go to affect the towns Christmas parade at 5 p.m. that Saturdaybusinessofgovernment.org/interviews.evening. With that trusted relationship, we provided the town officials with the best information so they could makeTo download the show as a podcast, go to PodcastOne or iTunes and search for The Business of Government Hour.the most informed decision. The parade was cancelled. When the tornado did touch down, it was between an F2To view excerpts of the show, go to youtube.com/or F3 and ripped through the block where the parade wasbusinessofgovernment.supposed to be. Weve received testimonials from the local officials that undoubtedly this process saved livesthats the IDSS connecting us to the decision making. On Partnerships and Collaboration Its a priority to make partnerships and business relationships a win-win for NOAA and the National Weather Service. We regularly host meetings and workshops with our partners to openly collaborate and explore opportunities to meet the vision of the Weather-Ready Nation initiative. Weve been partnering with Americas Weather and Climate Industry for decades to help expand the reach of NWS observations, forecasts, and warnings to communities and the public to save lives and property. We know we cant do it alone. There are areas where we know we need to leverage new and innovative partnershipsincluding use and visualization WINTER 2019 / 2020 IBM Center for The Business of Government 23'