How we measure the freshness of each figure

Each source has its own rhythm

The ECB publishes reference exchange rates once per working day; the World Bank updates its commodity price database every month; a geological survey may publish once a year. Labelling everything as “real time” would be false.

That's why each source in the register has an expected frequency and a tolerance window. A figure's status is calculated by comparing the date of its last successful update with that window.

The statuses

These are the statuses you'll see next to the data:

• Updated: within the source's expected frequency.
• Update pending: the window has passed recently, still within the grace period.
• Out of date: the last valid figure is shown, but it has exceeded its window.
• Source unavailable: the provider isn't responding or the connector has failed; the last valid figure is kept and marked as such.
• Unknown date: the source doesn't give a reliable date.
• Estimate: it's a modelled value, not an observation.

What we do when a source fails

We never replace a value with zero or with made-up data. We keep the last valid value, mark it as old, log the error, retry within limits and alert the team if the failure repeats.