The Data Balance Sheet brings together details of the development work undertaken in information management in 2021 and focuses on various aspects of data security and data protection. It also presents interesting facts and figures concerning central bank functions, information management and analytical work. The Bank of Finland’s first Data Balance Sheet will be published in April 2022.

The Act on Information Management in Public Administration, which entered into force at the beginning of 2020, obligates information management entities to organise sufficient supervision of compliance with the legislation, regulations and guidelines on information management.

The Data Balance Sheet will serve in future as a key component of the Bank of Finland’s reporting on information management. It presents more extensive information than before to stakeholders on the central bank’s operating environment in regard to data and its use. Its purpose is to highlight the importance of data – plus the information derived from it and the knowledge interpreted from that information – to the work of the central bank.

The Data Balance Sheet will be published after the publication of the Bank of Finland’s Annual Report. It serves to complement the Annual Report from an information management perspective.

Information management development programmes support the Bank of Finland’s strategic focus on knowledge-based management

During the course of 2021, the Bank of Finland has been running two development programmes aimed at improved information management and development of a platform for data and analytics.

The information management development programme was launched in connection with the entry into force of the Act on Information Management in Public Administration at the beginning of 2020. The development programme focuses on implementing the requirements of the Act.

Even before the new Act, the Bank of Finland had set up a development programme for data and analytics aimed at developing for the Bank and for the Financial Supervisory Authority a system platform for data and analytics as well as management and exploitation of analytical data.

The development objectives relating to management of analytical data were later incorporated into the general development objectives for information management, and going forward the data and analytics development programme will concentrate on developing the system platform and promoting its use.

Both development programmes support the Bank of Finland’s strategic focus on knowledge-based management.

A central bank’s data processing places large demands on data security

The information-intensive nature of the Bank of Finland’s operations and the critical nature of the data being processed place large demands on data security. For that reason, the data security policy applies throughout the entire organisation.

At the Bank of Finland, the Member of the Board with responsibility for data security together with the Head of Data Security and the Data Security Officer are responsible for implementation of data security and data protection work at the Bank and the Financial Supervisory Authority.

All operations at the Bank of Finland comply with the legislation governing data security and data protection, the requirements of the European System of Central Banks and best practices in central banking.

In addition, information management at the Bank of Finland is designed to accord with ISO standard 27001.

Unique central bank archive’s most interesting material is being placed online

The central bank archive’s oldest document is from 1812. Archive material has accumulated for over 200 years in paper form, and since 2018 almost exclusively in digital form.

The paper material occupies over 7 kilometres of shelves. Material is archived either permanently or for a set period. The National Archives of Finland decides which central bank materials are to be kept permanently.

Digitisation of the archive material was begun a few years ago. In part, digitisation focuses on historically interesting bodies of material, such as minutes of the meetings of the banking supervisors, while some of the work focuses on protecting material in danger of destruction.

The portion of the digitised material of most interest to researchers is published in the Institutional Repository, whose collections are growing year by year.

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