The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has embarked on a major change in its information management framework for handling the massive data flow, aggregation, analysis, public dissemination and data governance following the launch of its Centralised Information Management System (CIMS), Governor Shaktikanta Das said.
“This system uses state-of-the-art technology to manage big data and will serve as a platform for power users to carry out data mining, text mining, visual analytics and advanced statistical analysis connecting data from multiple domains, such as, financial, external, fiscal, corporate and real sectors as well as prices.
“In short to medium term, it would lead to a paradigm shift in the Reserve Bank’s economic analysis as well as supervision, monitoring and enforcement across multiple domains,” Das said in his address at the 17th Statistics Day Conference in Mumbai.
The Governor observed that the new system, which is RBI’s next generation data warehouse, is starting with reporting by scheduled commercial banks and will be gradually extended to urban cooperative banks (UCBs) and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).
“Incidentally, with the CIMS going live, the first weekly statistical supplement (WSS), which is the Reserve Bank’s weekly data release on its own operations and on developments in banking and financial markets, was compiled and processed in the CIMS for the week ended June 23, 2023.
“It will disseminate more data for public use and will also support on-line statistical analysis by external users at their end,” Das said.
Regulated entities will also have access to their past data and their assessment on quality parameters in the new system.
- Also Read: Dual regulation. Dialogue with govt does not mean compromising central bank autonomy: RBI Guv
The Governor noted that the Reserve Bank’s Regulations Review Authority 2.0 (RRA 2.0) has recently made several recommendations on streamlining reporting mechanism and reduction in regulatory compliance burden.
Many of these recommendations have already been implemented and others are in various stages of implementation.
“A major recommendation on system-based submission of the remaining email-based reporting will be implemented through the Centralised Information Management System (CIMS) in the coming months,” Das said.
The Governor emphasised that RBI treats data as ‘public good’ and is disseminating increasingly more data in public domain for use by analysts, researchers and general public.
The central bank’s preference is for general dissemination over meeting individual requirements.