FAA's "data driven" in this case is nothing but smoke and mirrors, a
PR fad to cover up the real reason of their inaction.
Further, "data driven" does not apply to fatal airplane incidents. See, to be "data driven", you must first collect data about events. Thing like "market basket analysis" where you analyse millions of "shopping baskets" to figure out what people who bought A are also inclined to buy, and make sure they are exposed to it so the likelyhod of sell is higher.
Now, applying "data driven" to flight safety would mean you let airplanes crash and don't bother to investigate until a certain type has statistically significant higher probability of haul loss than other types, and only then start to investigate why.
Well, I guess I was wrong in my opening sentence then... clearly FAA was in fact "data driven" in this case!