Executive Summary

The first data and statistics strategy for the Fund comes at a critical time. A fast-changing data landscape, new data needs for evolving surveillance priorities, and persisting data weaknesses across the membership pose challenges and opportunities for the Fund and its members. The challenges emerging from the digital revolution include an unprecedented amount of new data and measurement questions on growth, productivity, inflation, and welfare. Newly available granular and high-frequency (big) data offer the potential for more timely detection of vulnerabilities. In the wake of the crisis, Fund surveillance requires greater cross-country data comparability; staff and authorities face the complexity of integrating new data sources and closing data gaps, while working to address the weaknesses noted by the IEO Report (Behind the Scenes with Data at the IMF) in 2016.

The overarching strategy is to move toward an ecosystem of data and statistics that enables the Fund and its members to better meet the evolving data needs in a digital world. It integrates Fund-wide work streams on data provision to the Fund for surveillance purposes, international statistical standards, capacity development, and data management under a common institutional objective. It seeks seamless access and sharing of data within the Fund, enabling cloud-based data dissemination to support data provision by member countries (e.g., the “global data commons”), closing data gaps with new sources including Big Data, and improving assessments of data adequacy for surveillance to help better prioritize capacity development. The Fund also will work with policymakers to understand the implications of the digital economy and digital data for the macroeconomic statistics, including new measures of welfare beyond GDP.

The key elements of the overarching strategy are: integration, innovation, and intelligence: integration by bringing into alignment initiatives that are currently fragmented and unifying the data management function; innovation by working to take advantage of Big Data for higher-frequency monitoring, and deploying new technologies to close data gaps and meet surveillance needs, including through machine-to-machine data dissemination—particularly benefiting low-income countries; and intelligence by leveraging artificial intelligence for analyzing data and statistics.

The strategy encompasses six priorities:

• Agility in the identification of data needs;

• Building the global data commons—an integrated network of official websites publishing data essential for surveillance on a pre-announced schedule;

• Supporting the use of Big Data and other innovations;

• Securing seamless access and sharing of data within the Fund;

• Promoting the production of data that are comparable across countries; and

• Addressing weaknesses in official data.

To address data weaknesses—a crucial recommendation of the IEO—the Fund will continue to build statistical capacity across the membership, including with donor support. The new multi-donor vehicles (Data for Decisions and the Financial Sector Stability Fund) have been designed to ensure that capacity development is demand-driven and further aligned with surveillance priorities, including by supporting low-income countries and fragile states. The Fund will lead the work to promote cloud-based data dissemination through the broader implementation of the data standards initiatives and support its members in the use of non-traditional data sources (such as Big Data), further developing and applying methodological knowledge and experience for integrating data sources and for quality assurance.

The Fund needs the right skills to implement the overarching strategy. This will require fostering innovation, training, and retooling. Outside experts can supplement in-house expertise and bring new ideas. Access to data scientists will be needed to work on Big Data, and the forthcoming HR strategy presents an opportunity to find ways to bridge a talent gap.

To commence implementation of the overall strategy, Management has decided to:

• Reform the governance arrangements for data and statistics by broadening the purview of the responsible structure to cover all related work streams, including data management; and

• Move the Economic Data Team (EDT) from the Office of the Managing Director to the Statistics Department, thereby simplifying organization and facilitating wider synergies.

The strategy will aim to be broadly cost-neutral in the medium term, as implementation will involve reallocation of resources and exploitation of efficiencies. As the strategy fundamentally calls for integrating and reorienting long-standing frameworks and initiatives, the costs imputable to its vision are envisaged to be modest. Eventual actions to address the broader challenges of the digital world, beyond the scope of this paper, will emerge as thinking in this area is further developed.

Approved By

Louis Marc Ducharme