Designing an Information Management System for Watersheds

To build a foundation for sound decision-making and reduce electronic data transfer time, it is important to build an information management system concurrent with the development of a watershed management framework. Based on watershed management experience in several states, 7 key steps have been identified to design an information management implementation plan. 1) Establish information management design and implementation team; 2) survey watershed planning partners; 3) identify and prioritize data needs; 4) integrate/relate existing databases and develop new databases; 5) evaluate hardware and software configurations; 6) evaluate organizational, staffing, and support issues; 7) develop short- and long-range implementation plans. Recommended milestones and guiding policies for each of these steps are detailed in the report.