(Terms of Reference as decided by SOT-9)

The Task Team shall :

1. Oversee the implementation of MASK, SHIP and ENCODE and develop guidelines as necessary;
2. Review and approve national MASK schemes to ensure they remain unique and do not impinge on (1) the ITU callsign series allocated to a country, or (2) any other marine or oceanographic identification scheme used by WMO, e.g. buoy identification numbers;
3. Ensure the MASK v REAL database is kept up-to-date by NMSs implementing MASK;
4. Develop the ENCODE encryption strategy, as well as develop the encoding and decoding keys.