National Fraud Initiative
National Fraud Initiative
Since
its commencement in 1996, National Fraud Initiative (NFI) exercises have
identified over £35 million of fraud and overpayments in Wales. Reported overpayments
include sums of money that have already been paid out and forward projections,
where it is reasonable to assume that fraud, overpayments and error would have
continued undetected without NFI data matching.
The
most recent exercise covers the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2018. The
latest NFI exercise has been one of the most successful to date – uncovering
£5.4 million of fraud and overpayments across public services in Wales,
compared with £4.4 million in 1996.
The
initiative, which is carried our every two years, matches data across
organisations and systems to help public bodies identify potentially fraudulent
or erroneous claims and transactions. The Auditor General collaborates on the
NFI with the Cabinet Office, Audit Scotland and the Northern Ireland Audit
Office to match data across 13,000 organisations in England, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland.
While
all unitary local authorities, police, fire and NHS bodies in Wales are
mandated to participate in the NFI, the Auditor General encourages all publicly
funded bodies in Wales to participate on a voluntary basis and free of charge.
The
Public Accounts Committee
considered the Report in November 2018 and agreed to work with the Auditor
General for Wales on counter fraud in the public sector.
The
Committee held an informative and inclusive event on 1 July 2019 for
stakeholders. This was delivered by public sector colleagues together with
Wales Audit Office representatives to exchange support, good practice and
knowledge about counter fraud in the public sector. The event considered:
- How key organisations (Welsh
Government, police, NHS, local government, CIPFA, National Crime Agency
etc) interact and promote an effective anti-fraud and corruption culture
and policy framework across the Welsh public sector.
- Identified how and quantified
the extent to which the resources are allocated towards preventing and
detecting fraud and corruption across the Auditor General’s audited bodies
in the context of wider financial pressures; and
- Quantified the total
identifiable loss across our audited bodies arising from fraud and
corruption together with case study type analysis of significant instances
of loss.
Presentations
from the event are available to view below:
The Auditor General published a further Report, ‘Raising Our Game’ - Tackling Fraud in Wales, in July 2020 and the latest National Fraud Initiative (NFI) exercise report was published in October 2020. The Public Accounts Committee took account of the findings of both of these reports during its scrutiny of the Welsh Government’s 2019-20 consolidated accounts in autumn 2020.
Business type: Other
Status: Complete
First published: 16/08/2016
Documents