This is smart thinking. Data helps drive policies and actions. You can then concentrate on pushing out resources like better education of the programs implemented , better facilities,better fund allocations etc. when you have good data behind it.
LA was able to cut in half the number of gangs violence in the last decade, simply based on collection of data through a system called CompStat, short for computer statistics.
CompStat involved the real-time statistical monitoring of crime reports, giving cops, and their chain of command, data to which they could be held accountable. The cops use to upload every crime, its location, the type, time of day etc in to centralized system that then crunched the data and made predictions and suggestions of where the crimes would take place and how to best allocate resources.