Appeal to INAF Staff and the Astronomical Community
Recently, the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), following the recommendations of the RadioAstronomy Visiting Committee (RAVC) on how to strengthen Italian radio astronomy, initiated the process of establishing a new second-level INAF structure: the Observatory of RadioAstronomy (ORA), resulting from the merger of the Astronomical Observatory of Cagliari (OAC) and the Institute of Radio Astronomy of Bologna (IRA).
The OAC staff has always expressed, at every opportunity and at all institutional levels, full support for contributing to any effective form of coordination of Italian Radio Astronomy, provided it maintains the OAC’s autonomy in proposing and directing (summary page on the OAC site), similar to other facilities of perhaps even greater complexity, such as aerospace missions, which are efficiently managed cooperatively and synergistically by other INAF structures. An example of the feasibility of less invasive solutions is also the call issued on March 27, 2015, by the INAF Scientific Directorate for the creation of the Italian SKA Science Coordination Board: if a Board can be statutorily appointed and function to coordinate Italian participation in a colossal project like SKA, it is unclear why it cannot function for participation in VLBI, other Radionet initiatives, and the consequent management and development of the three Italian antennas. The OAC staff has consequently declared, and continues to declare, firmly and unanimously against the merger proposal.
Nevertheless, the INAF management has declared that it will proceed with the merger process, regardless of the unanimous opposition from all OAC staff. According to the “informal report” published on the INAF website, the Board of Directors indeed decided at the meeting on March 25-26, 2015, to proceed with the creation of the ORA.
We believe that proceeding with a change of this magnitude without the shared agreement of both structures is demoralizing, frustrating, and demotivating for the staff and, consequently, extremely damaging to the system.
The decision to establish “thematic” INAF structures by merging, unprecedentedly, geographically distant structures entails a radical change in the INAF architecture, which necessarily concerns the entire Institute and not just the directly involved structures.
We therefore appeal to all INAF staff and the astronomical community in general to support us in requesting that changes of this magnitude within INAF be made with the agreement of all parties involved, and not against the unanimous opinion of some of them.