The impact of globalisation on statistics was already the subject of our third ECB conference on statistics in 2006 and the events of the last months prove that globalisation will remain on our agendas for the foreseeable time. (2) The second major factor of relevance for our medium- to long-term strategy is the IT revolution.
Let me recall that this factor is not entirely disjointed from globalisation. Indeed, one of the main reasons why globalisation has accelerated over the last two decades is the boom in the use of information and communication technology, with the ensuing reduction in the cost of transporting goods, services and information across the globe.