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The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a unique example of enduring statistical cooperation and collaboration across national, regional, and global agencies. For over fifty years, the Program has delivered a vital public good: purchasing power parities (PPPs) and price level indexes (PLIs) for economies across the globe. PPPs enable a wealth of metrics on economic output, material well-being, and consumption, as well as a host of PPP-based indicators across the socioeconomic spectrum, many of which are used for monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Fundamental to these data and metrics is cross-country comparability, and the ICP's multi-agency partnership ensures that this is achieved through agreement on common statistical standards and methods in price data collection, in national accounts expenditure data compilation, in quality assurance, and in the calculation and dissemination of results. Working within a comprehensive governance structure overseen by the United Nations Statistical Commission, the ICP Global Office at the World Bank, and five regional agencies, together with Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), collaborate with over 170 national agencies to ensure that the work carried out across all economies adheres to these established benchmarks and processes, resulting in both bespoke ICP price collections that reflect both nationally relevant and globally comparable goods and services, and expenditure data that follow international standards. This paper presents an overview of this unique global partnership and highlights how different challenges and processes are addressed by stakeholders working with shared knowledge towards a common goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global financial system appears to be heading for a new crisis, triggered in large part by growing and unsustainable levels of global debt. Reserve currencies are an essential element of the world's current financial infrastructure, and are widely recognized for their role in facilitating international transactions. History has taught us that such currencies are also quite transient, being subject to adjustments and changes as economic conditions evolve over time. The United States dollar now serves as the de facto world's reserve currency. However, this is unlikely to continue unchallenged and unchanged into the future. The G20 and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appear to be now considering a reserve currency, such as the Special Drawing Rights (SDR), which is obtained through participation of many currencies. The major question is not what will become the new global reserve currency, but how this new currency will be managed. One of the critical issues associated with this currency management effort is that of determining the information systems architecture that will be required, including whether an associated Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) would be helpful in managing this new global currency. An extremely important element in this currency determination activity is a strong governance protocol that all the governments and sovereigns will accept and comply with. Otherwise any new global reserve currency, regardless of whether it is associated with a major information systems architecture foundation, will likely be unsustainable. In this paper, we examine these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]