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Overall the panel felt that a lot of progress had been made this year, in particular rebooting evaluation efforts, continuing to lead and manage the governance structure, and aiming towards a coalesced ACCESS structure as a whole. There are a number of elements in place that will be helpful in achieving the goals (once finalized), although not all of the results are ready to be reviewed. In particular, the panel would like to see urgency in developing ACCESS goals and measures, to include DEI. The panel is eager to see how future engagements, including RP on the EC and other management integrative steps, help build cohesion among all the ACCESS elements. The panel would like to recognize the willingness, commitment, and capability of the ACO to help ACCESS achieve all of its goals, even when challenging issues must be addressed.

We appreciate the Panel's time, attention, and thoughtful comments provided to this review. The ACO is committed to providing the community with the highest level of service possible and strives to be responsible stewards of the support provided by NSF to the ACO on behalf of ACCESS.

We agree with many of the Panel's comments below. The ACO continues to do more than was scoped for it and has augmented the project with significant contributed resources to compensate for what we believe is an underfunded award for the expected scope. Moving into PY3 we believe it is essential for the EC to be more actively involved in prioritizing work across the program so that available resources can be put to use where they matter most. We will continue to put these important topics before the EC and provide the tools and mechanisms to make progress.

We appreciate the Panel's acknowledgment of the progress made since the last review. The ACO team has worked hard to address issues raised in the prior review as well as those that have emerged since that time. Progress on program-wide goals and metrics, and other program-wide initiatives is paced by the contributions and engagement from the other teams.

We appreciate the Panel's acknowledgment of the human and material resource issues. As presented during the review, it is important to note that the ACO has a total headcount of approximately 2.6 FTE. Additional contributed effort by the NCSA and SDSC partners has been necessary to make progress in key areas such as evaluation workgroup process, general program governance, program-wide strategic planning, and other activities.

The remainder of this response document focuses on the “Opportunities to Improve” indicated by the Panel. This is not to discount the recognition of the Strengths noted in each area and we do appreciate the Panel’s noting of those. In addition, there are some noted Strengths that we also provide comments regarding. Still, it is the case that improvement of the project, and by extension, the ACCESS program as a whole, must focus on the areas of potential improvement. To provide clarity, below the contents of the panel report are italicized and our comments and responses to that are in normal text.

PY2 Review Response Tasks

Responses to Observations and Opportunities for Improvement Indicated by the Review Panel

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The ACO concurs with this recommendation but emphasizes for both of the bullets above that while the ACO can and does advocate for these things via the EC, Working Groups, and Standing Committees, it is the the EC that must make decisions regarding prioritization and allocation of staff time to support these program-wide efforts.

Recommendation 1.2: Work within the EC to develop a coherent program-wide strategy that involves all services to bring under-represented groups into the computational science research community.

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