Delegates gathered in Helsinki in October for the final workshop of the SAON process. Breakout groups worked on drafting recommendations for the Arctic Council as well as proposing specific actions for the immediate future. One such action is that SAON-IG members will stay involved in the process at least until the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting in April 2009. Another action is that IPY-secretariats of Canada and Sweden will work on SAON outreach, which includes producing a printed version of the SAON Report as well as maintaining this web site.

The third SAON workshop was arranged at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, Finland 15-17 October 2008, sponsored by the Finnish Ministry of Environment.

The third workshop did not focus on information gathering, but rather on using the information already available to prepare the final report and recommendations. Therefore, workshop attendance was dominated by chair persons and session chairs of previous workshops as well as representatives of funding agencies and science organizations.

Most of the work took place in four breakout groups according to the table below. The breakout chairs provided discussion papers circulated as preparatory documents before the workshop. Chairs were also responsible for reporting back breakout group discussions at a succession of plenary session during the workshop. Please, find discussion papers and reports in pdf-format below.

'Building blocks' Chairs: Martin Jeffries & Keith Alverson	Discussion paper	Report from breakout group
Funding and coordination Chairs: Paul Egerton & John Calder	Discussion paper	Report from breakout group
Data management Chairs: Craig Tweedie & Simon Wilson	Discussion paper	Report from breakout group
Organization Chairs: Volker Rachold & Lars-Otto Reiersen	Discussion paper	Report from breakout group