The water information team at DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) publishes surface water and groundwater data on a public website—the Water Management Information System (WMIS). WMIS contains data on water levels, water flow and water quality for all the Regional Water Monitoring Partnership (RWMP) monitoring sites across Victoria (850 surface water flow and level sites, 1,400 groundwater level sites and 180 water quality sites). The RWMP is a collection of 45 agencies (water corporations, CMAs, local/ state/ commonwealth government) that come together to share the costs of water data acquisition and collect all data to a common standard. The collective ‘buying power’ of the partnership results in reduced monitoring costs and less duplication of effort for partner organisations.

Generally, data is collected in two ways: it can either be collected manually in the field or be transferred via telemetry. Field data is collected monthly for surface water and quarterly for groundwater, and by the time this data is verified and published on WMIS it can be 2–3 months old. DELWP currently has approximately 900 telemetered sites collecting continuous data, but currently, has no capacity to receive or publish this data in real time on WMIS.