National Weather Service Communications Improvement Act

Subjects: Science, Technology, Communications, Atmospheric science and weather


<html><body><pre>[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1414 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

&lt;DOC&gt;






118th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1414

 To improve the instant messaging service used by the National Weather 
                    Service, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                              May 3, 2023

Ms. Cantwell (for herself and Mr. Cruz) introduced the following bill; 
    which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, 
                      Science, and Transportation

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To improve the instant messaging service used by the National Weather 
                    Service, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

     This Act may be cited as the ``National Weather Service 
Communications Improvement Act''.

SEC. 2. NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE COMMUNICATIONS.

    (a) In General.--Title IV of the Weather Research and Forecasting 
Innovation Act of 2017 (15 U.S.C. 8541 et seq.) is amended by adding at 
the end the following:

``SEC. 415. NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE COMMUNICATIONS.

    ``(a) Improvement of Instant Messaging Service.--
            ``(1) In general.--The Director of the National Weather 
        Service shall improve the instant messaging service used by 
        personnel of the National Weather Service by implementing by 
        October 1, 2027, a commercial off-the-shelf communications 
        solution that replaces the instant messaging service commonly 
        referred to as `NWSChat'.
            ``(2) Requirements.--The communications solution 
        implemented under paragraph (1) shall--
                    ``(A) be hosted on the public cloud; and
                    ``(B) satisfy requirements set forth by the 
                Director to ensure that the solution--
                            ``(i) best accommodates future growth;
                            ``(ii) performs successfully with increased 
                        numbers of users;
                            ``(iii) is easy to use for the majority of 
                        users; and
                            ``(iv) is similar to systems already in 
                        commercial use.
            ``(3) Definition of public cloud.--In this subsection, the 
        term `public cloud' means an information technology model in 
        which service providers make computing services, including 
        compute and storage and develop-and-deploy environments and 
        applications, available on-demand to organizations and 
        individuals over the public internet.
    ``(b) No Additional Funds Authorized.--Funds to carry out this 
section may only come from amounts authorized to be appropriated to the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before the date of the 
enactment of the National Weather Service Communications Improvement 
Act.''.
    (b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of contents in section 1(b) of 
the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 is amended 
by inserting after the item relating to section 414 the following:

``Sec. 415. National Weather Service communications.''.
                                 &lt;all&gt;
</pre></body></html>