DATA MANAGEMENT EXPERTS GROUP MEETING, MARCH 8,

1. (U) Summary: The Data Management Expert Group (DMEG) met
on March 8, 2007. Italy, Spain, and Romania introduced new
representatives, and the Chair reported on staff activity
since the January meeting. After reviewing the status of the
NCFS and VERITY XXI for the current CFE, the group focused on
a training session (20-22 June) just after the June DMEG. The
training will cover the VERITY Mapping Tool, Off-line
Inspection Component (OIC), and the VERITY Announcements
Module. The sessions will provide both an overview of the
module and practical exercises for users. The next meeting
is June 19, 2007 at 1400. End Summary.



2. (U) At the March 8, 2007, meeting of the Data Management
Experts Group (DMEG), the Chair (Metin Paksoy) reported on
staff activity since the last DMEG in January. The Staff has
isolated the VERITY Chart-printing software development
environment and provided it to Computing Technologies,
Inc.(COTS), the U.S. developer of the OSCE Automated Data
Systems (ADS) to aid in reconciliation of VERITY
chart-printing software and the ADS. The staff also has
loaded into VERITY the 2007 CFE exchange data and created the
2007 Notified Current Force Structure (NCFS) dataset. They
have loaded into VERITY the inspection reports received from
Nations and automatically loaded the notifications received
via the OSCE Network.



3. (U) In discussion regarding the NCFS, Belgium reported a
missing notification dated 2 January 2007. Paksoy indicated
that notifications coming before the creation of the 2007
dataset in VERITY, had been applied to the 2006 datasets. He
said that the staff would scrub and correct any such gaps for
early 2007. The UK representative also said that a new
update for the UK notification compilations should be
expected in the next few weeks.



4. (U) The ACCS staff provided the usual set of inspection
reports held in VERITY and those missing from VERITY. After
reviewing these reports, no national representative raised
any outstanding issue.



5. (U) In discussion of VERITY XXI for the current CFE
Treaty, John Thomas reported that he routinely tests the
system compatibility as upgrades of the component software
become available. He noted that an unexpected impact on
VERITY of the upgraded .net framework has been to limit user
use of certain special characters. Mr. Thomas also reviewed
the status of problems identified during the January Data
Assembly concerning the VERITY chart-printing. The
development of the capability to print chart footnotes is
being implemented. Other problems with the printing of long
names on Chart VI and with inaccuracy in the identification
of reduction sites on Chart IIIB have been resolved. The
Spanish request for functionality to change the header on an
unnumbered Chart IIIB will require discussion at the CCB in
Vienna. Norway reported a problem that when a user logged
off the Mail module of VERITY, it closed the browser and
required the user to log on again. John Thomas will look
into the problem and suggested that it may be related to use
of a version of Internet Explorer that is earlier than 7.0.
ACCS is undertaking development of an alternative to PROBE,
the current database for bug reports, and he promised to
provide a timeline for that application at the June DMEG.



6. (U) A status report of the Off-line Inspection Component
(OIC) stated that a downloadable NCFS update file for the OIC
had been distributed via VERITY. Individual nations seemed
to have been able to make the OIC update smoothly.



7. (U) The most interesting discussion of the meeting was
about the Way Ahead for the Current VERITY XXI. Topics for a
proposed training session in the wake of the June DMEG were
selected. The session schedule will be as follows: Day 1
(Wednesday) the VERITY Mapping Tool, Day 2 (Thursday) the
OIC, Day 3 (Friday-half day) the Announcements Module. The
sessions will include both an overview of the module of
interest and hands-on exercises based on concrete scenarios.



8. (U) Regarding the status of the Adapted CFE (A-CFE),
Paksoy reported little political progress can be expected in
the near term due to problems with fulfillment of the
Istanbul Commitments. Therefore, this was not the right time
for the DMEG to undertake further work on the A-CFE module of

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VERITY.



9. (U) Use of the PEM-HEART software for provision of Mission
Reports by Nations has been held up by delays in the delivery
of equipment needed to set-up the system in ACCS. This
equipment is now coming in and the ACCS system should be up
in the near future.



10. (U) The final item was Any Other Business and the only
issue was a question from Italy asking what the impact of
VISTA will be on VERITY and its components. John Thomas and
Metin Paksoy both indicated that they prefer to take a "wait
and see" approach before undertaking real tests for
compatibility between VERITY and Microsoft VISTA.

11.(U) The next meeting will be Tuesday, June 19, at 1400. It
will be followed by the training session on June 20-22, 2007.
NULAND