From the WLCG Overview Board:
- NCBJ (PL) has been endorsed as WLCG T1 for LHCb. Congratulations! A formal letter of commitment from NCBJ was received this week. We agreed that T1 resources can be pledged already for 2024 (CRIC will be updated accordingly).
- IHEP (China) made very good progress in the process to become T1 for LHCb. It will be re-discussed at the May 2024 OB (after the Data Challenges). The OPN connectivity is the main item to address.
- Serbia recently became member of WLCG, signing the MoU on 09/12/2023 [1]. The ambition is to become a T1 for CMS.
- The MoU with Malaysia has been SUSPENDED: no pledges, no contact since 2018.
- The draft WLCG strategy document was presented (attached). The pillars of the priority were agreed and some areas need to be expanded further. As next step, WLCG needs to define a fine-grained workplan. Will be one of the discussion points at the WLCG/HSF workshop in May 2024.
- Tommaso and David will be Simone's deputies from 01/01/2024.
- All WLCG annexes apart from Annex5 were reviewed. The reviewed material will be presented to the WLCG Collaboration Board for endorsement.
From the CERN council:
- The International Cooperation Agreement between CERN and Belarus/Russia will expire in June/Nov 2024 and will NOT be renewed. All relations between CERN and Russian and Belarussian institutions will cease as of these dates. No impact for JINR (will be discussed next year). WLCG will need to discuss the implications of this with respect to:
- The Russian T1 and T2s (apart from JINR) as service and resource providers;
- The members of the Belarussian/Russian institutes (apart from JINR) as users.
From the LHCC
- Congratulations to WLCG sites and the experiments for the successful completion of the 2023 LHC run.
- The progress made in the area of event generators will be reviewed in a focus session at the Feb LHCC.
- In June 2024 the LHCC will come back to the discussion about analysis facilities. Each experiment will be asked to answer a set of questions. The questions will be circulated by the LHCC early next year.
- The discussion about the physics parameters driving future resource requests (e.g. # of MC events) will happen only after summer.
- Gonzalo Merino (PIC) will take over from Catherine Biscarat (IN2P3) as LHCC lead referee for WLCG.
Other:
- Following the discussion with the DUNE computing management, we realised that DUNE as observer is invited to attend the WLCG MB but not (formally) the GDB nor the WLCG Operations weekly and WLCG operations coordination meetings. The same is true for other observers (Belle-2, Virgo, JUNO). We suggest to invite them "formally".
[1] https://home.cern/news/news/computing/serbia-joins-worldwide-lhc-computing-grid
WLCG Management Board
