The United States invests some $160 billion in federal R&D every year. Little is known about the results of those investments; science policy investments are typically made on the basis of faith rather than evidence. Indeed, the Science of Science Policy Interagency Working Group, a subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences subcommittee, summarized current agency practice in a 2008 Roadmap. A key finding was that the current data infrastructure was inadequate for decision-making. This panel describes new data that have been generated to improve that infrastructure - new data on patents, new data on science investments and the scientific workforce, and new data linking university research funding and economic outcomes. The purpose of the session is to engage the APPAM research community in using the data to increase the evidence basis for science policy.