As part of its economic review published on Thursday, the ONS said introducing changes to how it examines economic data will mean it can spot turning points in the economy and warn the government of problems sooner.
VAT data will be used to give a more conclusive idea of the state of the economy rather than business survey responses and the ONS will work closer with the Bank of England to provide earlier ideas on the performance of the financial sector.
Many of the improvements have already begun to be used to estimate changes in GDP.
Head of national accounts Darren Morgan said: “It is vital that ONS is able to pick up turning points as soon as they happen, enabling policy makers to respond quickly.
“The improvements announced today improve the quality of GDP estimates and help to reduce the size of future revisions.”
The changes come after the ONS was criticised for being too slow to spot the downturn of 2008.
The GDP in the second quarter of 2008 had contracted by 0.7% according to latest estimates, but it was thought at the time GDP was still growing at 0.2% based on figures from the Index of Services, the ONS had found.
