Data that Delivers

Source details

Publication: F&D Magazine — Data that Delivers
Author: GITA BHATT
Date: December 2025
Reading indicator: Less than a minute(0 words) Read
Core thesis: To serve the public good, data needs to help us see our world more clearly, make better decisions, and respond intelligently to complexity.
Closing observation: "Data, after all, is a means not an end."

New data sources (satellites, smartwatches, social media, transaction swipes) and techniques are expanding measurement to levels previously unimaginable.
Key questions posed:
- How can we distinguish meaningful signals of economic activity from noise in the age of artificial intelligence?
- How should new data sources be used to inform policy decisions?
- To what extent can new sources of data complement or replace official statistics?
- Are we measuring the metrics that matter in today’s increasingly digital economy, or merely tracking legacy indicators?

Kenneth Cukier: harnessing alternative data requires a new mindset; economists risk clinging to outdated metrics despite faster, granular, and sharper alternative insights that better reflect "ground truth".
Limitations of alternative data:
- Often a by-product of private business activity and carries private-sector biases.
- May lack long continuity and robust methods that underpin official indicators.
Conclusion: Official statistics remain essential.

Claudia Sahm: central banks are using new data to fill gaps (including falling response rates to national surveys) but do so in tandem with trusted official sources.
- Recommendation: strong ties between statistical agencies, private providers, government officials, and academics to improve data quality.
- Caution: reliance on data sources not available to the public erodes transparency and central bank accountability.
Bert Kroese (IMF): reliance on private data must not reduce resources for official number crunching; strong, independent national statistical agencies are vital to data integrity and policy credibility.

Rebecca Riley: core economic metrics like GDP and productivity are increasingly misaligned with a rewired, data-driven economy.
- Recommendation: modernize measurement systems to better capture intangible assets such as digital services and the evolving structure of global production.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: concentration of data collection among a handful of Big Tech companies threatens competition and innovation.
- Policy case: mandate broader data sharing.
Thijs Van de Graaf: AI's data hunger creates material pressures (energy, chips, minerals, water) that are reshaping global power dynamics.

Laura Veldkamp: explores how to price, use, and share information and proposes approaches to make intangible data countable.
Jeff Kearns: highlights nowcasting and other innovative approaches helping developing economies close information gaps.
Saurabh Garg (head of India’s statistical agency): discusses tackling challenges of scale as public demand for real-time data grows.

Better measurement is not solely about more data but about using data wisely, especially as AI amplifies both possibilities and noise.
Policy priorities distilled from the issue:
- Preserve and strengthen official statistical capacity and independence.
- Foster collaboration among statistical agencies, private providers, government, and academia.
- Ensure transparency by prioritizing publicly available data sources when possible.
- Modernize measurement frameworks to account for digital services and intangible assets.
- Implement policies to reduce data concentration and promote broader data sharing.
- Recognize and manage the material and geopolitical implications of AI-driven data demand.

Data that Delivers
- Data that Delivers (Markdown version)
- Data that Delivers (PDF)
fd-dec25-lowres - 2024. Each dot represents a country’s
- fd-dec25-lowres - 2024. Each dot represents a country’s (Markdown version)
- fd-dec25-lowres - 2024. Each dot represents a country’s (PDF)