The World Bank collects a lot of data and now they want to give it away. The Bank's Open Data initiative provides users with access to data, including more than 7,000 indicators from World Bank data sets. The Data Catalog lists available datasets, such as databases, pre-formatted tables and reports. Each listing includes a description of the data set and a direct link. In many cases, users can customise data by selecting the countries, indicators, and years they want to search.

There is also selected microdata for download and analysis. This data concerns people living in developing countries, their institutions, their environment, their communities and the operation of their economies.