About GWFO

Governance and oversight of GWFO is overseen by a Governance Board (herein referred to as the Board). The Board is composed of representatives of prominent data user organisations, prominent experts on freshwater data collection and management, and the Vice-Presidents Research of USask and a rotating member from among the other partner institutions. The Board ensures that the vision, mission, and objectives of GWFO are achieved, monitors activities and progress, holds the facility to the highest standards of operational excellence, promotes broad engagement across the partner universities as well as other national and international partners and key stakeholders, ensures that finances are well-managed, that the facility is optimized for supporting research and training, and that the facility fully adheres to CFI, university, other major funding partners’ policies and procedures.

Management and strategic initiatives of the facility are implemented by a Strategic Management Committee (SMC) that reports to the Board. The SMC is Chaired by the GWFO Director and includes representatives from each of the main partner institutions as well as other expert scientific expertise representatives. It is the primary management and executive committee for GWFO, responsible for providing direction and ensuring optimal operations and utility towards supporting monitoring and transformational science, managing GWFO finances and budget, and providing recommendations to the Board for allocating resources. The SMC is supported by the Secretariat and the User Advisory Panel (UAP).

The GWFO Secretariat, based at the University of Saskatchewan, is responsible for the planning and coordination of network activities, ensuring the continued operation and proper functioning of the facility, tracking and reporting usage metrics, and liaison with management, oversight, and advisory committees in the execution of these tasks.

The User Advisory Panel (UAP) is comprised of a wide range of representatives of GWFO data and service users and people in a position to provide solid guidance and advice. The UAP is intended to build user engagement with GWFO, provide insights into the user science and decision support needs underpinned by the GWFO data, provide recommendations and avenues for translating GWFO’s data to support the real-world impacts, and enhance scientific exchange with private and public sectors and Indigenous organisations and communities. The panel provides strategic advice in identifying and catalysing new opportunities to grow GWFO’s user-base and services.

The GWFO Facility Leads oversee and direct operations and data collection at the instrumented sites, laboratories, and deployable systems, or work directly with others responsible for the sites to support operations and act as GWFO liaisons. The leads are professors and faculty from our partner institutions who supervise technical and data management staff. The GWFO Data Management Team includes staff at each of the major partner institutions with oversight and direction from experienced faculty representatives at these universities, as well as high-level guidance from the SMC. This team is responsible for the management, retention, use, and dissemination of data collected through GWFO. GWFO Technicians are responsible for the installation, operation, and maintenance of field equipment and deployable systems, and for gathering data from these systems and liaising with data managers to ensure preservation and accessibility of data. Technicians assist and/or manage GWFO laboratories and oversee sample analyses and maintenance of lab equipment. Together, this group comprises the Operations Team, which facilitates coordination and sharing of best practices, identification of gaps and opportunities, tracking of progress and facility usage metrics, and enhances communication, knowledge mobilisation, and data sharing.