Anecdotal Record?

I was confronted with an interesting assertion while watching an interview with the NSW Health Minister the other night. The interviewer was talking about evidence of mismanagement in NSW hospitals, and that this evidence was "what is on the anecdotal record of various sources". This then lead to a discussion around my dinner table about whether this was a contradiction in terms. This discussion questioned whether or not anecdotal evidence is considered "on the record". My position was that it can be, but there was some compelling argument that - in a bureaucratic structure particularly - the system rejects "anecdotal evidence" on the basis of it being off the record, as it is not verifiable and repeatable. Each anecdote is a different story, and in this context, is not being introduced to the system in a way it can recognise. It re-enforces to me the need to promote the work of people like those at Anecdote, building systems to deliver anecdotal evidence in a form that can be considered on the record.