The Bank’s data and analytics strategy: a three-year roadmap
Background
The Bank’s mission is to promote the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability. The Bank’s 2021 strategic plan recognised that data was integral to that mission, enabling ‘decision-making to be informed by the best available data, analysis and intelligence’.
The Bank has made significant progress in the use of data and analytics (D&A). There has been a steady increase in the number of staff using the Bank’s new set of core analytical tools and, in some areas, we are pioneering the application of machine learning in central banks. We have also further improved management of our critical data, built new tools to analyse the Bank’s largest data sets and delivered new insights. One in four people at the Bank is now a member of our data community and one in five are writing code regularly in R or Python to carry out their analytical work.
Last year the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) took stock of the Bank of England's use of data to support its policy objectives (published October 2023). The IEO found that we needed to refresh our approach to build on our achievements and meet our ambition. The report set out 10 detailed recommendations, under three key themes: to agree a clear, updated vision for D&A, supported by a comprehensive strategy and governance; to break down institutional, cultural and technological barriers; and to broaden and deepen our efforts to equip staff with the necessary tools and skills to work effectively with data. These themes were subsequently echoed by the Bernanke review of forecasting for monetary policy making and communication (published April 2024).
In our response to the IEO report, we published an overview of our approach to refreshing the D&A strategy, including new governance arrangements to take it forward, and committed to publishing a three-year implementation roadmap.
Below, we provide an update on some of the changes we have made and our progress since October 2023.
The Bank's new data and analytics strategy
The overall aim of our D&A strategy is to make the best use of data to fulfil the Bank’s mission.
Our updated strategy will make it easy for everyone at the Bank to work with and analyse data, bridge data gaps to maximise the value of the data we collect, acquire and share, and enable safe and effective innovation, including use of artificial intelligence (AI).
This will deliver significant benefits including more effective decision-making, efficiency gains and risk reduction. We will work to ensure:
- required data products to support decision making are in place and supported to continuously improve;
- staff have access to the data, the analytical tools and have the skills they need to do their jobs effectively;
- effective and efficient regular D&A processes, in line with agreed policies and risk tolerance;
- direct financial cost, including commercial data acquisitions and cloud costs, are managed efficiently;
- a strong data culture where innovation, data-sharing and collaboration thrive; and
- efficient and effective data collections and sharing of the data externally, enhancing the Bank’s reputation.
D&A strategy overview
Our Bank-wide D&A strategy is made up of a set of Bank-wide ‘missions’ and ‘foundations’. The missions describe the outcomes that we are working towards, while the foundations identify the cross-cutting support that is required to enable them. These missions and foundations have been refined since they were published in draft last year, to make them clearer:
Bank-wide missions
Make it easy for people in the Bank to work with and analyse our data
This mission aims to make it easy for our colleagues in the Bank to find, understand, access, trust, combine, and analyse the structured data we already have. It will support productive ways of work, enable broader efficiencies and reduce data-related risks.
Bridge the data gaps to increase the value of the data we collect and share
The Bank collects large amounts of data and relies on data acquired from external organisations and purchased from third parties. This includes the production of statistics for the financial sector and prudential regulation and supervision. This mission will identify and prioritise data gaps, and review the Bank’s overall approach to bringing data into the Bank and sharing it. We will ensure that we can meet business needs and deliver value for money. We will ensure the Bank meets and exceeds its domestic and international commitments, closes the most important data gaps, and maximises the value of its data through safe sharing internally and in accordance with our legal obligations, externally.
Enable safe and effective innovation, including AI
Our D&A strategy will deliver AI pilots and deploy AI solutions that support operational, policy and management decisions. These pilots will look at a range of different tools and use cases. Our goal is to encourage responsible experimentation and the use of new technology. We draw on the experience of the pilots to define a scalable AI framework to ensure that we are using AI in an ethical and transparent way. By finding and deploying the right AI solutions, we will develop new capabilities and support and improve efficiency of all aspects of the Bank’s work.
Bank-wide foundations
Cloud for data
We will design and deploy a modern enterprise data platform on the cloud for use across the Bank. The platform will give our colleagues access to our data and a modern analytical tool set with the ability to run powerful analysis in a cost-effective way. In addition, the platform will guide colleagues to incorporate data governance and management standards in their work, and to follow our data product development model. We will continuously improve this enterprise data platform.
Business change, skills and culture
To achieve successful adoption of our D&A services and tools, we will need to effectively manage business change. We will do this by carefully planning business change and supporting colleagues as they adopt new services. We will extend learning support beyond technical training so that all colleagues have the D&A skills they need for their roles. We will create a supportive D&A culture, with colleagues solving business problems and learning together. And we will define a Bank-wide career proposition for data professionals.
Recent progress in implementing the D&A strategy
Good progress has been made in furthering the D&A strategy since its approval in the September 2023 Court meeting. This section provides details of progress made, as at the end of May 2024.
In recent months, we have:
- rolled out new D&A policies that make it easier, quicker and safer for the Bank’s staff to work with data. This will help ensure that our data are well managed, and easier to find, understand and access, while reducing key operational risks;
- published new guidance that makes it easier for staff to collect and properly manage regulatory data;
- increased the range, volume and value for money of the data we purchase, allowing more staff access to vital market data;
- established a new Data Ethics Working Group so that we can fully consider and manage the ethical implications of our use of data, particularly as we move into more complex and novel areas such as AI;
- launched a platform for sharing analyses and dashboards across the Bank; and
- piloted migration of some current Data & Analytics Platform services to a tactical cloud solution. This has created space on the existing platform for more users and projects.
Progress has also been made on the strategy’s enabling foundations. Work is underway on refining a Bank-wide D&A skills strategy that considers the gaps between the skills we need and have and provides a basis to close these gaps systematically. And a target technology architecture has been designed to enable the outcomes of the Bank-wide D&A strategy. This is now in its second iteration, taking into account feedback from business users and an external benchmarking review. This work has also identified the next steps to be taken to build the Bank’s foundational cloud capabilities.
Looking forward
We have translated and sequenced our strategic goals into a Bank-wide plan. This roadmap reflects our current thinking and assessment of what is achievable.
Looking forward: year one
Our year-one priorities are to:
Establish cloud capabilities and deploy them for priority use cases
We will build and deploy the first phase of an enterprise data platform. This platform will initially support a small number of priority use cases, including modernising statistical production, macroeconomic data for monetary policy and transforming regulatory data collections. It will also establish a Bank-wide store for key financial market data and a ‘self-service’ environment for data scientists to access data. We will test our target technical architecture by delivering an operational proof of concept for at least one data set, to evidence benefits.
Enhance D&A policy compliance
Implementation of the policies will make it easier to find, understand, and access data sets and the analytical processes they support. We will support those managing core data sets and important analytical processes with new tools and streamlined procedures that make it easier to comply.
Deliver on use cases for AI and machine learning
We will deliver business use cases for AI, focusing first on the analysis of unstructured data received from regulated firms and business contacts. This will increase AI skills at the Bank and inform our AI and cloud strategies. We will consider data ethics and governance as we progress this work, providing colleagues with guidance and support that promote safe and effective use of AI.
Enhance support for business change, and D&A skills and culture
To maximise the benefits of modernising our analytical platform and processes we will enhance our business change team. We will review our ways of working, including interactions between the business, the Data & Analytics Transformation directorate and the Technology directorate. We will plan and initiate this change in year one, developing an appropriate operating model and evolving this over subsequent years. We will broaden support for the development of D&A knowledge and skills, and a supportive D&A culture.
Improve the availability of data
We will enable access to a wider range of market data. We will also extend and enrich master and reference data to meet business priorities.
Collaborate with other organisations to improve data collection and sharing
We will engage with UK and international organisations to assess if we can share more data. We will influence updated international statistical standards for compiling macroeconomic statistics, enabling wider improvements to macroeconomic analysis in 2025. We will work with key partners to agree priority improvements to UK financial statistics. We will identify the most important data gaps for the Bank’s own work and draw up plans to close them.
Roadmap for regulatory reporting
Through the Banking Data Review and Transforming Data Collection, we will develop a roadmap to ensure the Bank collects the data it needs while achieving value for money. We will create a full business case for the investment required.
Looking forward: years two and three
Year two and three priorities will build on progress and plans we make in year one.
We expect our year two and three plans to include initiatives to:
Continue development of the enterprise data platform
We will start to implement the plan to migrate to the enterprise data platform, with the first early adopters being onboarded to test the functionality. We will consider risks and benefits to prioritise which users and data we onboard first.
In year two we will run the new cloud enterprise data platform alongside the existing data platform. This will help us establish a modern technical data architecture and operating model based on user need, feedback and emerging technologies and services, while de-risking the transition with the fallback of proven solutions.
Business programmes of work will start to benefit from the enterprise data platform in year two. For example, the Future Data Systems programme will deliver on the enterprise data platform. We will also establish a sequenced plan to enable other groups of colleagues to use the cloud platform.
In year three, use of the enterprise data platform by business programmes will increase. These will include the Transforming Data Collection and Future FAME (Forecasting Analysis and Modelling Environment) programmes. We will decommission the existing solutions to ensure efficiency gains from new ways of working and embed our use of the cloud for D&A.
Increase access to modern tools, including AI
Following pilots, we will deploy a business cloud data test area, which will include access to AI tools. We will begin to define the path to deploying AI at scale, to realise efficiency gains while managing risks.
Enable business areas to self-serve
As the platform and operating model evolves, colleagues will be empowered to self-serve on the cloud. This will improve autonomy and user experience. We will provide enhanced support, guidance, controls and training to make it easier for business teams to manage their data.
Data and AI skills
Our work in this area aims to allow our colleagues to take full advantage of the opportunities that come out of the new tools that we will introduce. To do this, we need to ensure that they not only know how to use the tools, but also understand their risks and limitations.
We will review and improve our D&A learning solutions and will add learning for additional topic areas as well as providing more detailed learning on selected topics. We will ensure appropriate D&A learning is included in our induction for all new joiners.
We recognise major investment programmes may create additional data and AI skills needs. We will work with relevant business initiatives and investment programmes to develop relevant content to support them.
Conclusion
Since our response to the IEO report, we have further clarified our ambitions and set out our roadmap for achieving them. We have made good progress towards the objectives set out in our strategy. We have an ambitious change programme to continue to modernise how we collect, acquire and share data, how we work with it, and how we innovate. This will deliver new capabilities to enhance decision-making across the whole Bank and enable more productive and efficient ways of working.
We will continue to report on progress against this plan at least annually.
