Abstract

Evidence-based policy-making rests on the ability of decision-makers to access relevant evidence; the existence of relevant evidence rests on the ability of analysts and academic researchers to provide such analyses.

Access to timely and rich data offers substantial potential to reach the bliss-point of both decision-makers and researchers: Plentyful, rich and high-quality evidence provided in an agile manner in response to quickly emerging needs on the one hand, and through long-term investments in important research trajectories on the other hand.

Finland has taken big steps towards this bliss – point. The pivotal moment emerged during the dark early days of the COVID pandemic. At the initiative of researchers at Helsinki Graduate School of Economics, Statistics Finland, Ministry of Finance and researchers at VATT Institute of Economic Research came onboard to establish a new facility – the Helsinki GSE Situation Room - that combined:

• Secure computational facilities of Statistics Finland
• Research expertise of Helsinki GSE and VATT researchers to guarantee the high quality of the analysis
• For the first time ever, extremely timely data – at its quickest, researchers had access to data that was only a couple of days old.

We quickly realized that this initial effort should evolve into a long-run scheme. Each crisis is unique, but as we have learned since COVID, it is only a question of when, not if, the next crisis hits. The GSE Situation Room transformed into the VATT Dataroom which now operates on a permanent basis.

Statistics Finland has taken up the baton in this respect and has introduced and is further developing the concept of data rooms. Several have now been established, and more are in the planning stages.