The current HST operations approach is proactive, and designed to allow an expansion of HST capabilities with time. Examples of these activities in the past year include not only new capabilities for recently installed instruments, but more effective use of parallel observing time. Very high priority is generally placed on achieving high observing efficiency and maximizing usage of the observatory. There is an expectation that every proposal will eventually be scheduled. We do not currently meter the amount of effort spent on a program based on its science priority.
Calibration is maintained at high levels for all supported modes of which there are many.
Typical goals for photometric accuracies are a few percent, far better than is usually obtained by other ground and space based observatories. Data are calibrated in a calibration pipeline and delivered to users. The science portion of the pipeline as well as associated tools for data analysis are distributed to users so that the data can be re-reduced and further analyzed at their home institution. This will assure that the best calibration files and latest updates to the calibration software are used on data as it is retrieved. STScI user support is extensive and human-intensive.