NRAO may choose to accept paper proposals. If so, NRAO would need to employ someone to insert the proposal into the appropriate computer readable form. This database will have limited access. The director's office informs the referees the Set of OP's is complete. Referees view the OP's over the internet.
Referees generate comments and suggested changes to the OP's.
For example, in addition to comments about the general merit of the observing proposal, a referee might indicate that the desired noise level is unrealistic or not necessary. The general form of the comments will mirror that of the OP, though most items will contain no information unless the referee explicitly thinks a change in the observation parameters is required. A software tool will help the referees input their comments and will automatically input them into the limited access Set of OP's database. When the TAC has completed its job, the Observing Queue database is generated from the Set of OP's database. The modifications to the observation parameters decided upon by the TAC are applied to the observer's original observation parameters, and the OP's are ranked by priority in the queue.