[LEAPSECS] leap seconds since WRC-15

[Steve Allen]

At the 2015 WRC the general assembly seemed to admit that the folks
pushing to abandon leap seconds had not done their homework.  In the
interim the news has been thin, but there are some good clues that the
homework is being done.

The clearest of all these comes directly from the BIPM itself
and gives a timeline of many things that have been happening and
will be happening
https://www.bipm.org/cc/PARTNERS/Allowed/2016_October/5-Decision-of-the-WRC-2015-on-the-leap-second.pdf
Folks who are editing the wikipedia page on the leap second process
may wish to review this as citable evidence of what is happening.

This lays out that the BIPM watched the CCTF create a task group under
the Working Group on TAI (WGTAI).  The Task Group on Time Scale
Definitions (TGTSD) first met 2016-09-28.

Much, more, this lays out the timeline as seen from the BIPM.
The TGTSD submitted a report to the CCTF meeting 2017-06-08/09.
That approved a recommendation sent to the CIPM 2017-10/11 which
might have approved a recommendation to be sent to CGPM 2018.

The timeline continues into the future with a description about what
the CGPM might be asked to do includes the words "after the revocation
of Res. ITU-R TF. 460-6".

The membership of TGTSD is visible in
https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/DIR/DIR2016/time2016.pdf

Also, in late October ITU-R WP7A met in Geneva.  The title of
a result from that meeting is visible as
    [43] Annex 02 - Working document towards preliminary draft new
    Report ITU-R TF.[UTC] - Content and structure of time signals to
    be disseminated by radiocommunication systems and various aspects
    of current and potential future reference time scales, including
    their impacts and applications in radiocommunication
and WP7A also sent
    Liaison statement to Working Parties 4A, 4B, 4C, 5A, 5B, 5C, 5D,
    6A, 6B, 6C, 7B, 7C and 7D
which can be supposed as an alert that they all might want to read
the working document.

It is too soon for detailed clues about what just happened at
CIPM and WP7A, but things are clearly moving along.

--
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