Purpose:
The Conference Program Committee shall organise with an impartial paper selection process a high-quality technical Conference that reports on global advances in design and test methods and tools of electronic systems from integrated circuits to distributed large-scale systems

Composition:
The Conference Program Committee consists of technical Topic Chairs and the following Chairs of the DEC:

Conference Program Chair (Chair of this sub-Committee)
Conference Program Vice-Chair
Past Conference Chair
Design Forum Chair
Posters Chair
Special Sessions Chair
Electronic Review Chair
Audio-Visual Chair
Tutorials Chair

This organisation of this Committee shall serve to bring all issues related to technical content of the Conference under one umbrella. This shall make it easier to maintain coherence and consistency of the total technical program.

The Conference Program Chair shall select the individuals that will serve as Topic Chairs on the Conference Program Committee. Topic Chairs shall be persons who are knowledgeable technical professionals that have demonstrated their competence through technical publications and professional involvement Each Topic Chair shall be allocated a Topic Review Committee with a sufficient number of Reviewers such that each paper will have 4-8 reviews without overloading any individual reviewer. Topic Chairs may invite persons to join their Topic Review Committee.

The membership of this Committee shall be balanced between industrial and academic representation.

The members of this Committee shall be from different geographical areas, and shall generally represent different organisations.

Term:
The term for DEC Chairs shall be as indicated in the description of the DEC. Topic Chairs should serve at least two years, but preferably not longer than three years to not restrain renewal of the competence areas in the Conference too much.

Responsibilities:
The Conference Program Committee is responsible to run a high quality selection process to compose the technical program of the Conference. The review process of the Design Forum contributions is different from that for the Conference. It is brought in this Committee to emphasise also there the importance to try to improve continuously the quality of the contributions.

Tasks:
The Conference Program Committee shall describe the Paper Review Process to be followed with milestones and deliverables.

The Conference Program Committee shall select papers to be presented, and shall recommend to the DEC how these papers should be collected into Sessions. The Conference Program Committee can also recommend additional papers that can be used as alternates, should problems develop with the original paper selections.

The Conference Program Committee shall maintain a database o competence areas, current Topic choices, current reviewers and potential reviewers. The purpose of this activity is:

• To keep track of the evolution of available person power in a certain competence area
• To signal timely new important competence areas
• To avoid overloading of the current reviewers in a certain Topic
• To avoid stagnation of technical evolution in a Topic
• To come to timely renewal of reviewers of Topics
• To look for new talent for Topic Chairs
• To keep an outlook on new potential reviewers.

Topic Chairs should inform the Conference Program Chair timely which persons they want to add, and eventually which they want to remove from their Topic Review Committees.

Meetings:
The Conference Program Committee will meet at least once in October/November, approximately seven weeks after the published due date for submitting papers to finalise the paper selection and compose the program of technical sessions of the Conference.

Decision making:
Decisions on paper acceptance are taken per Topic by consensus; if that proves unreachable the Topic Chair decides, if necessary after consultation with the Conference Program Chair.