Germany’s national ocean observing activities are carried out by multiple actors including governmental bodies, research institutions, and universities, and miss central coordination and governance. A particular strategic approach to coordinate and facilitate ocean research has formed in Germany under the umbrella of the German Marine Research Consortium (KDM). KDM aims at bringing together the marine science expertise of its member institutions and collectively presents them to policy makers, research funding organizations, and to the general public. Within KDM, several strategic groups (SGs), composed of national experts, have been established in order to strengthen different scientific and technological aspects of German Marine Research. Here we present the SG for sustained open ocean observing and the SG for sustained coastal observing. The coordination effort of the SG’s include (1) Representing German efforts in ocean observations, providing information about past, ongoing and planned activities and forwarding meta-information to data centers (e.g., JCOMMOPS), (2) Facilitating the integration of national observations into European and international observing programs (e.g. GCOS, GOOS, BluePlanet, GEOSS), (3) Supporting innovation in observing techniques and the development of scientific topics on observing strategies, (4) Developing strategies to expand and optimize national observing systems in consideration of the needs of stakeholders and conventions, (5) Contributing to agenda processes and roadmaps in science strategy and funding, and (6) Compiling recommendations for improved data collection and data handling, to better connect to the global data centers adhering to quality standards.