The pandemic wreaked havoc on a large number of businesses, but decisive action by the Central Bank and the Government has provided a cushion against the blow, and now companies in general are well positioned – with the caveat that many tourism companies have yet to right themselves. It is also very important that Iceland’s external position be well-balanced. Our net external asset position is positive: we own more than we owe abroad. This means that foreign interest rate hikes will not erode our balance of payments. The exchange rate of the Icelandic króna is also close to equilibrium, and the financial system is no longer dependent on external financing as it once was. And last but not least, the Central Bank holds some 900 b.kr. in international reserves so as to secure Iceland’s balance of payments and prevent upheavals in the foreign exchange market. We have everything we need to protect Iceland against tidal surges from the international open sea. It is also important that Iceland is no longer a marginalised inflation incubator but is well aligned with its trading partners. A global battle against inflation is about to begin, with the world’s largest central banks tightening their monetary stance. And that will be of benefit to us in our quest to maintain stability. I would like to close with a well-known quote published by cartoonist Walt Kelly on 22 April 1970, the first Earth Day.
But to reap all the benefits, central banks have to be up to the technological challenge, which is huge. They have also to face a much larger competition in the new data Era, with a view to maintaining trust in public information. They have therefore to become Big Data players and not only observers. This requires significant efforts. Let me illustrate this in five avenues to adapt to the digital evolution. a)  The Big Data era implies large changes in the IT infrastructure and a strong  determination to address novel technical challenges and to build a forward-looking data management and analysis scheme. At the Banque de France, we are building a Data Lake that covers all the new data functionalities, from data collection to machine learning. 3 b)  Central banks should also organise themselves to answer the legitimate  request from academics to have access to a wide range of granular data, in a modern and researcher-friendly way. At the Banque de France, we opened just one year ago a Data Room which gives access to 600 million of anonymized series, and it has already attracted more than 30 research teams. Harvesting Big Data capacities is only beginning and central banks should be in the race. c)  Data quality should be maintained at the same time. There should not be with  central banks input/output process any ‘garbage in, garbage out’.