So in 2009, Ravindran and three classmates dropped out of college to focus on bridging this information gap through the development of a text message-based search engine.

CNN: Entrepreneurs take to the seas for inspiration

Representatives of African countries, ASEAN, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of American States pleaded for debt relief and efforts to narrow the "digital divide" -- the fast-growing gap between nations with access to information technology and those starved of IT.

CNN: Just do it

Yet the organisation seems to have a surprising gap in its own knowledge - it has told the Information Commissioner that it doesn't hold any information on what its chief executive is paid.

BBC: The group which doesn't know its chief executive's pay

Once you leave the country, there is a dearth of information for camping in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, so the website Drive the Americas is working to bridge that information gap by consolidating tips, advice and profiles of current road-trippers and their useful blogs.

BBC: Camping through Mexico and Central America

So although the Bank has been able to draw on other sources of information, such as private-sector surveys, the lack of an official earnings series left a gap in its inflation-watching kit.

ECONOMIST: The labour market