National Weather Service Communications Improvement Act

“415. National Weather Service communications

“(a) Improvement of instant messaging service

“(1) In general—The Director of the National Weather Service shall improve the instant messaging service used by personnel of the National Weather Service by implementing by October 1, 2027, a commercial off-the-shelf communications solution that replaces the instant messaging service commonly referred to as “NWSChat”.

“(2) Requirements—The communications solution implemented under paragraph (1) shall—

“(A) be hosted on the public cloud; and

“(B) satisfy requirements set forth by the Director to ensure that the solution—

“(i) best accommodates future growth;

“(ii) performs successfully with increased numbers of users;

“(iii) is easy to use for the majority of users; and

“(iv) is similar to systems already in commercial use.

“(3) Definition of public cloud—In this subsection, the term public cloud means an information technology model in which service providers make computing services, including compute and storage and develop-and-deploy environments and applications, available on-demand to organizations and individuals over the public internet.

“(b) No additional funds authorized—Funds to carry out this section may only come from amounts authorized to be appropriated to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before the date of the enactment of the National Weather Service Communications Improvement Act.”