Data joins the world's national accounts as an asset
The UN's statisticians back a new standard that counts data as capital, the first rewrite of the rulebook since 2008.
Picture made for ABURA Bureau.
At its session in New York from 4 to 7 March 2025, the United Nations Statistical Commission unanimously recommended the 2025 System of National Accounts as the new international standard for measuring economies. It replaces the 2008 version that most countries still use to compile their GDP.
Among the changes, the information held in digital data used in production comes inside the asset boundary, as a new category of produced fixed asset. Under the 2008 rules it was left out. The test is practical: data counts as an asset when it is used in production for more than one year, and data that gives its owner no direct economic benefit, such as a by-product of operations nobody uses, is excluded. A company's own data is to be valued by what it cost to produce.
For owners it is a quiet but large shift. The people who measure GDP now treat data as something built and kept, like software or research, rather than as something that simply accumulates. National figures will take years to appear, but the question of what a company's data is worth is now one the world's statisticians are asking too.
