Dear Minister

In accordance with Section 70 of the Public Service Act 1999, I present the Annual Report of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for 2003-04.

This report represents the activities, achievements and performance of the Bureau for the 2003-04 financial year. This year has been my first as Director of Meteorology. It has been a year with many challenges and significant change and during which the Bureau:

• Installed a new supercomputer and migrated all its operational and research systems into the new environment without any interruption to services;
• Commenced the upgrade of the weather radar network;
• Experienced near exponential growth in the use of its internet accessed services;
• Developed plans for substantial changes to the surface-based observing network; and
• Modified its internal program structure to strengthen the focus on disaster mitigation.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the valuable input the Bureau received over the past year from your Parliamentary Secretary, Dr. Sharman Stone, to whom you have given Ministerial responsibility for the Bureau of Meteorology.

I would also like to thank the Bureau of Meteorology staff for their dedicated efforts throughout 2003-04 - efforts that have ensured the continued provision of a broad range of world class, public good, meteorological and related services.

Yours Sincerely