You're absolutely right. A date is a very quantifiable thing. As long as there is no human error in inputting that date, it's a very easily measurable system.
An adjudication process goes through many steps. When you're trying to understand what elements within a process are causing delays or slowdowns such that you can't meet the service standards, you need to be able to measure as something moves through all of the steps in the process. That's where the quality of the data starts to break down. The department doesn't know how long something might sit in one area or what's causing the delay.
We use data as a real general term. It's about having information about where the file is. If you can put a tracker on it, finding out where it goes, when it slows down and when it doesn't slow down, it would help you to identify measures to target the slowdowns.