the excellent eminent services provided by the secretariat throughout the session. We greatly appreciated their efforts and we are very impressed by the way they handled our technical material. The second phase of the Group's Second Large-scale Technical Test which we refer to as GSETT-2, started on 16 January 1990. This phase, which will continue until our summer meeting, is designed as a gradual build-up of the testing of the entire system. The initial part of this phase involved the trial testing of existing facilities of the global system one day per week for eight weeks. The recent meeting of the Group had two main purposes: to review the results of this test period and to plan the remaining stages of GSETT-2. The results of this first co-ordinated test of the components of the global seismic system of available facilities was quite satisfactory. Valuable experience was obtained by participating countries and facilities as well as by the Group as a whole. This was made possible because of careful planning guided by the co-ordinator of GSETT-2, Mr. Peter Basham of Canada, and the dedicated work of a large number of scientists and technicians at participating facilities around the world. To operate a system in the real world differs considerably from conceptually designing it. Some of you may recall that during the Group's Technical Test in 1984, we received a message from one station saying "no data CD/PV.549 11 (Mr, Dahlman, Sweden ) available - seismometer stolen". This time considerable interruption occurred in data transmission when a communication computer at one of the experimental international data centres was the object of a similar crime. Twenty-one countries participated in this initial stage of the global test by establishing and operating national data centres usually referred to 
**Analysis**
The text appears to be discussing a scientific or technological project, specifically a global seismic system, and the efforts of a group of countries and scientists to test and refine it. The language used is technical and formal, indicating a specialized field of study. The text also mentions the importance of planning, coordination, and collaboration among participating countries and facilities.

**Category**
Science and technology