Dissemination of Information by the Federal Reserve System: An Overview and Benchmark

This paper examines the Federal Reserve System’s dissemination of information strategy to see how well it has worked and how it can be improved. The System provides information to a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations. The evidence collected, for the first time, shows a high level of discrepancy in relation to the use of social media channels to disseminate information among Banks in the Federal Reserve System. Overall, the Federal Reserve System adopts and makes available to stakeholders the same platforms for the dissemination of information. They use the same general structure of alternatives, but with significant differences in accessibility, availability, and quality. There are many options to improve the current offerings in these three attributes when one takes into account not only the best practice within the System but also that adopt by central banks in other jurisdictions, and even organizations in the private sector.