The U.S. National Science Foundation supported Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) project includes extensive development of data storage and delivery tools and standards including WaterML (a language for sharing hydrologic data sets via web services); and HIS Server (a software tool set for delivering WaterML from a server); These and other CUASHI HIS tools have been under development and deployment for several years and together, present a relatively complete software “stack” to support the consistent storage and delivery of hydrologic and other environmental observation data. This presentation describes the development of a new HIS software tool called “HIS Desktop” and the development of an online open source software development community to update and maintain the software. HIS Desktop is envisioned as a local (i.e. not server-based) client side software tool that will run on multiple operating systems and will provide a highly usable level of access to HIS services. The software will provide many key capabilities including data query, map-based visualization, data download, local data maintenance, editing, graphing, data export to selected model-specific data formats, linkage with integrated modeling systems such as OpenMI, and potentially upload to the HIS server from the local desktop software. As the software is presently in the early stages of development, this presentation will focus on design approach and paradigm and is viewed as an opportunity to encourage participation in the open development community. Indeed, recognizing the value of community based code development as a means of ensuring end-user adoption, this project has adopted an “iterative” or “spiral” software development approach which will be described in this presentation.