This guidance note is based on an internal survey of central banks (joined by a few international institutions and statistical agencies) organised through the network of the Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics (IFC).
It sheds light on five main aspects related to central banks’ use of time series products, namely:
- whether time series data are treated separately from other data types;
- the reported use of time series software;
- the relative strengths and shortcomings of alternative approaches;
- the potential need for a new software generation for dealing with time series data in the “big data” era; and
- some lessons looking forward.