I think that's true. I'll give one example.
In Memphis, Tennessee, they were facing a pretty serious residential burglary problem. They did again what I would call one of these shallow analyses, and they figured out that the police districts with the highest residential burglary rates were the districts where most of the returning offenders from prison were going. It's a very common analysis in the States; it probably happens in Canada as well. They immediately fixed on a collaboration with parole and police to address this burglary problem. They hired a researcher from the University of Memphis who took a more careful look at the issue. What he found was a very strong link between truancy and residential burglary by youth.
In a very short amount of time there was this aha moment that they were going down the entirely wrong path because of their traditional reliance on the data that they normally use to analyze these problems. Once they did a little intelligence work and had some focus groups in the community, and did some collaborative work, they had a completely different understanding of the problem they were facing. They clearly took a very different approach.
Things like that happen quite frequently.