GeminiFocus 2016 Year in Review | Page 57

Gemini ’ s Transition Program 2011-2015
Inger Jørgensen

A Transition Comes to an End

Gemini ’ s Transition Program 2011-2015
In 2010 the United Kingdom announced its intention to leave the Gemini Partnership . This prompted the Observatory to plan for a roughly 25 % reduction in its annual operations budget , which translates to about $ 6.5 million in 2012 dollars . To handle this situation , we developed a plan that touched all areas of the Observatory , including nighttime science operations , energy consumption , maintenance schedules for printers , and just about everything in between . Thanks to the Observatory ’ s available cash reserves , we could stretch the implementation through 2015 .
Figure 1 . Savings from the Transition Program projects . Amounts are in thousands of dollars .
The plan , called the Transition Program , consisted of three general areas of focus : staff reductions , general reductions , and the implementation of specific projects . Staff reductions contributed about $ 3.5 million to the required savings . General reductions in non-labor expenses — enabled by tight tracking of budgets , reduction in travel expenses , lower computer prices , etc . — saved about $ 1.5 million . And the implementation of about 25 projects ( aimed at reducing non-labor costs or enabling operations with a smaller staff ) also secured about $ 1.5 million , of which about $ 400,000 are still to be realized in 2016 . Figure 1 gives an overview of these savings .
Some of the changes resulting from the Transition Program are visible to our users while many are only visible internally . As of this writing , the
January 2017 | 2016 Year in Review GeminiFocus
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