It used to take the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Commerce Department about 24 hours to process the data to measure the state of the nation's Gross National Product.

But thanks to a new data centric approach, BEA can produce the data now in about 40 minutes.

BEA chief information officer Brian Callahan calls it an amazing change.

Callahan says this dramatic improvement is one example of how BEA is modernizing its technology infrastructure.

He adds that he hopes to take the best practices learned by improving the GDP process and apply it to several other data-driven systems.

The modernization project is just one of three major BEA IT priorities, Callahan says.