The Bank of England deployed the core of a shared cloud data platform earlier this year to support analysis across its responsibilities, Chief Data Officer Ben Martin said.
The central bank is moving data services and systems onto the platform in stages while replacing older systems, Martin said. He outlined the changes in his Nov. 4 speech, published by the Bank of England as “Data and analytics transformation at the Bank of England to enable, equip and empower − speech by Ben Martin”.
The aim is to let staff share information across the institution, including data originally collected for different purposes, Martin said. He said connecting that information could improve analysis supporting the central bank’s economic, financial supervision and operational responsibilities.
The central bank’s data owners and stewards support more than 2,000 registered data assets across the organisation, Martin said. Those arrangements assign responsibility for the information and its daily management, he said.
Martin said the platform would bring together economic and financial market information obtained from partners with regulatory and statistical submissions collected directly from financial firms. It would also give staff analytical tools and access to approved artificial intelligence models.
He said the platform would organise incoming information into trusted data that staff could reuse for analysis. The central bank is also developing working arrangements to support the technology and provide a shared base for future data projects.
The work forms part of an investment programme spanning several years, Martin said. He said it combines new technology with improvements in data quality, oversight and staff skills, because sophisticated artificial intelligence still depends on reliable underlying information.
Martin said the central bank had introduced an organisation-wide data management policy, assigned ownership and stewardship responsibilities, and added data management training. The practical goal is to help staff find information, understand its contents and judge whether it suits their work, he said.
He said accumulated data, systems and processes presented challenges for the longstanding institution. As datasets move onto the new platform, staff are reviewing their contents and improving quality, he said.
Martin said independent reviews by the Independent Evaluation Office and Ben Bernanke had reinforced the importance of addressing those problems. He said building new technology alone would not remove the complexity inherited from older arrangements.
The central bank also wants staff to use new analytical capabilities safely, with controls and training, Martin said. Its artificial intelligence strategy, published last year, sets principles for using the technology that he said still hold despite rapid advances in models.
Martin said the transformation remained unfinished and the central bank’s ambitions needed to keep pace with technological change.
