According to a publication delivered this morning, the National Fraud
Initiative (NFI) is the Audit Commission's data matching exercise designed
to help participating bodies detect fraudulent and erroneous overpayments
from the public purse. It began in 1996 and runs every two years.
NFI data matching includes data from the following sources: housing
benefits, occupational pensions, payroll and tenancy data. Local government
is required to provide the data as part of its statutory external audit
under Section 6 of the Audit Commission Act 1998.
NFI 2000 was the most successful ever, enabling local government, Central
Government and the NHS to identify over ?50m of fraud and error.
The results of the NFI 2002 for our local council (population c. 100,000)
are now available. Out of 32 cases identified for further investigation a
total of FIVE cases were proven, either from the actual matches or from
information gathered during the investigations. These comprised one case of
undeclared living together as an unmarried couple, three cases of undeclared
non-dependent living in the property and one case of undeclared earnings.
Total overpayments from the public purse of under ?400 were identified and a
total of ?84.29 is now being saved each week. Unfortunately no information
was provided on the cost of this exercise, nor on the effect that
mismatching data caused to those individual data subjects who were suspected
of fraud.
Grossing up these figures implies fraud and error totalled ?3m for the UK,
rather than the ?50m claimed for NFI 2000. Hmm...
--
Graham Smith
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All archives of messages are stored permanently and are
available to the world wide web community at large at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html
If you wish to leave this list please send the command
leave data-protection to [log in to unmask]
All user commands can be found at : -
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/commandref.htm
(all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|