The data commons: Taking big data global - Central Banking

In March 2018, members of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) executive board gave their blessing to a dramatic overhaul of the way the organisation gathers, governs and uses data. The Overarching strategy on data and statistics, the first of its kind, lays out how the fund plans to improve the quality of data, boost the ease with which it can be shared, and start making greater use of innovations in big data and artificial intelligence (AI). Key to the strategy is the "global data commons" – an ambitious, cloud‑based platform for gathering large quantities of data from IMF members. The aim is to bring all of the data together in one place in an readily comparable format, making use of common data standards and methodologies. Researchers, journalists and members of the public should no longer be required to trawl through an array of often-labyrinthine websites belonging to national statistics offices and instead be able to access all of the data through a single portal.