"There's no reason they shouldn't have that," he said. "If you have an abnormal number of kids in Kaitaia who are absconding from CYF care - how are you meant to know what resourcing to put there if you don't have those statistics available?"
Mr Davis questioned whether CYF were being "upfront" and wondered how national statistics were collected if they were not collected regionally first.
Ms Tolley acknowledged the system was "broken".
"I have had concerns about the lack of good data in CYF and this was confirmed by the expert panel I appointed in April to provide advice on a complete overhaul of the agency. I believe the current system is broken, and that major transformational change is needed to better meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people," Ms Tolley said.
Ms Ardern said she knew information was collated at a national level but questioned the rationale behind not collating that information at a regional level.
"Each region is different," she said. "It's not about data collecting for the sake of data collecting. It's about making sure that kind of information is collected so you can use it. For example, so we can say there's more kids in the care of individual caregivers therefore that tells us we need more emergency caregivers," she said.
Ms Ardern believed the lack of good data in the agency was because of staffing issues and said more resources were needed.