Inger Jørgensen
A Transition Coming to
an End
Gemini’s Transition Program 2011-2015.
Figure 1.
Savings from the
Transition Program
projects. Amounts are in
thousands of dollars.
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.
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 nonlabor 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 \