Data management (DM) strategies are issues of crucial importance, as these data represent a considerable investment of time, money, and resources.  The long-term legacy of data from the program can only be assured by its careful deposit in repositories and indexing in a centralized service.

GWFO has adopted a distributed data preservation and access model that leverages existing, trusted repositories which meet GWFO data stewardship criteria and can be searched and accessed from a centralized metadata search portal.  We encourage publication of data with persistent digital object identifiers (DOIs) along with sufficient metadata and detailed descriptions.  To ensure long-term, ongoing public accessibility to large volumes of complex and disparate data and associated information, a new tool, GWFNet has been developed as a user-friendly high-level information hub specialized for relating together different forms of records on water science research. 

GWFO employs a professional data management team with staff at each of the major partner insitutions with oversight and direction from experienced faculty representatives at these universities, as well as high-level guidance from the SMC.  The DM team has prepared detailed plans and a sound strategy for DM with the following overall objectives:

1. Ensuring management of data throughout the research lifecycle;
2. Establishing data governance practices and processes;
3. Developing techniques and tools for data stewardship; and,
4. Providing input and assistance on all data-related initiatives of GWFO.