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Quarterly Update on the Special Data Dissemination Standard—Fourth Quarter 2001 New Subscriber On November 28, 2001, Costa Rica became the 50th subscriber to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) and the third new subscriber (the others were Brazil and Tunisia) since the end of the transition period in December 1998. These new subscriptions represented the culmination of intense work with Fund staff; a number of other countries are actively working to meet the requirements of the SDDS. Observance Status By the end of the fourth quarter, 49 of 50 subscribers met the SDDS requirements for the coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of the data and for the dissemination of advance release calendars, compared with 47 subscribers at the end of the previous quarter and 35 subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2000 (Table 1).1 (A complete list of subscribers may be accessed on the Fund's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) at http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/sddscountrylist/.) One SDDS subscriber—Iceland—was not in observance of the Standard. Information on the status of this subscriber has been posted on the DSBB (see the What's New page). All 50 SDDS subscribers now disclose data on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity in accordance with the SDDS reserves data template.

Monitoring

Monitoring of the data and access dimensions of the SDDS is carried out against the release dates stated in subscribers' advance release calendars and metadata. In the fourth quarter, there was a substantial improvement in the timeliness of releases for monthly and quarterly data categories compared with the same quarter of 2000 (Table 2). Compared with the previous quarter, there was improvement in the dissemination of quarterly data. However, notwithstanding the adjustment of release dates due to extended holiday periods, some monthly data categories (production index, consumer price index, and the analytical accounts of the central bank) showed slight fluctuation largely due to temporary data collection and processing delays that caused some subscribers to miss their release dates.

DSBB Usage

In conjunction with the implementation of staff monitoring of observance of the SDDS, a database of DSBB usage statistics has been developed. The results of an analysis for the fourth quarter showing, inter alia, the 10 most frequently accessed countries' metadata are presented in Table 3. The table shows that several emerging market economies are among the most frequently accessed countries on the DSBB. Ongoing work to activate hyperlinks from the DSBB to national data sites (apart from the national summary data pages) as well as to other metadata providers (such as the European Central Bank and Eurostat) contributed to an almost four-fold increase in the number of "hits" in the fourth quarter, compared to the corresponding quarter of 2000. The moderate decline in the number of "hits" in December can be attributed to the extended holiday period in many countries that subscribe to the SDDS.

DSBB Enhancements

Efforts are underway to substantially upgrade the functionality and capabilities of the Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) through the introduction of a Relational Database Management System for metadata combined with the rendering of the DSBB metadata model (SDDS and GDDS) in XML vocabularies and schemas. These enhancements will provide a significant upgrade in the search and query facilities on the DSBB, thereby giving users improved access to metadata. Also, through the introduction of portal and data mining capabilities, users will have the possibility of searching and querying the content of related websites.

These enhancements to the DSBB are being implemented within a broader effort on the part of several organizations to foster the development of an open exchange system for the dissemination and exchange of statistical information on the Internet. Such a system would provide users with access to information on the Internet independent of the platform (hardware and software) used. Toward this end, the IMF, in collaboration with the BIS, ECB, Eurostat, OECD, and the UN, has formed a task force on Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX). The task force aims to develop forward-looking standards and protocols for data and metadata exchange while leveraging the current investments of the participating organizations in such systems. For further information, please see www.sdmx.org.

Other DSBB Developments

Users will notice additional changes to the DSBB that facilitate navigation within the site and accessing external sites. These changes include the following:

• Increased number of hyperlinks from the DSBB (base pages, dissemination formats, and summary methodology pages) to National Summary Data Pages (NSDPs) for easy reference to external data.

• Increased number of internal links on the DSBB (most recently to facilitate access to IMF methodological publications).

• Improved interface for European Economic and Monetary Union members who are SDDS subscribers so that users can easily access complementary data and metadata provided by the European Central Bank and Eurostat through hyperlinks from the DSBB to these sites.

These links, combined with the increase in the number of SDDS subscribers and GDDS participants and the corresponding wealth of metadata on the DSBB help explain the more than 30-fold increase in DSBB usage since its inception in September 1996.