Central bankers commenting for Economics Benchmarks 2021 observed a rapid rise in the use of alternative data sources due to the pandemic.

Alternative data are primarily data points on the economy that are either not collected via traditional methods – data gaps – or do exist but are available with such a time lag as to be limited in usefulness, and so other sources are found. 

Speaking on the direction of change in data use, one central banker in a lower-middle income institution in the Asia