Sliding statistics standards

Govt must make data more timely, comparable and accessible

The recent Economic Survey made a case for what it called “agile” policy that responded swiftly to changes in the overall economic landscape, using newly available high-frequency data. Much of the data quoted in the Survey, however, was from non-government sources such as mobility indicators collected by Google. Those that were from government sources were often new-age tech-based indicators such as goods and services tax collection and highway tolls. The fact is the data indicators that are collected by the government itself are neither collected often enough, nor collated in a timely fashion. Worst of all, they are not released