Just as private-sector organisations are having to do, the Spending Review will force the government and public sector to sweat its assets. It will need to make full use of the tools it gathered in the boom years and also take advantage of the phenomenal data sets that it has collected, to gain better insights into challenges and make processes more automated and efficient.

Data within public sector organisations is still managed in silos and, because the majority of administration methods are paper-based, this data is rarely shared or cross-referenced, which means processes are hugely inefficient and expensive. Outdated processes and systems could also have a major impact on the rise in fraud within organisations – in the public or private sector.

The latest estimates of fraud in the public sector put losses between £18bn and £25bn a year. The National Fraud Authority (NFA) estimates up to £6billion could be saved across Government over the next three years if departments got behind the initiatives and invested appropriately in preventing fraud*.

The coalition government and the Spending Review is set to turn the public sector on its head. Drastic budget cuts will mean that even the most stuck in the mud institutions are having to reassess the ways in which they operate – and will therefore be forced to re-evaluate current assets. Most local governments have the data and technology available to them to approach the expected cuts with confidence that they have the ability to survive on much lower budgets.

One area that is likely to suffer heavily is the housing sector. According to news released on the BBC’s website yesterday, the social housing budget is expected to be cut in half. This could have severe complications when it comes to unlawful subletting and occupancy and could lead to an increase in housing fraud. As such, local governments need to be extra vigilant when assigning budgets; making sure they allocate these to the right people. This is where the right technology and solutions come into play.
 
There is a range of motivations for unlawful subletting and occupancy, and therefore work to tackle this issue needs to be balanced with the effort to deal with the causes and help prevent incidents from occurring in the first place. Work to reduce the levels of unlawful subletting and fraud should be linked to wider organisational strategies and policies. Failure to do so, and an increase in fraud as a result, can have a devastating effect on individuals and businesses alike, causing a range of financial and emotional harms, which have often remained unrecognised.

John Feenan
Head of Public Sector, GB Group

* Statistics sourced from NFA’s ‘Fraud in the Public Sector’ Post Event Report. Event held on 24th September 2010

They’re not shy for a bit of publicity this new Government. Not content with targeting 40% spending cuts in public services and taking free school milk away (those under 5’s won’t be voting for years!) we’re back on the benefits fraud trail again. It’s an obvious target really and one that a succession of Governments have tried to tackle. The difference here is that for the first time Government is acknowledging the role of tracking financial transactions in identifying potential fraud by an individual. Now this is not a completely new initiative - credit data has been used by Central and Local Government for a while, to help identify potential fraud around benefits such as the single person council tax discount or housing benefit claims.

The difference, however, sounds like a much more co-ordinated use of credit file transaction data by the DWP to identify potential fraudsters, together with a risk reward model to encourage potential suppliers with the resource to be involved with the collection process too. The latter point of course limits the number of potential suppliers to, well, Experian really! It will be interesting to see what benefits being a “bounty hunter” does to their consumer friendly “let us check your credit report” image. Sometimes you need to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds you! I also wonder whether the DWP are completely happy with so much hype by Experian regarding their involvement in these projects. Have they been officially appointed without a formal procurement process? Time will tell.

However, there is still much less avaricious companies can do to help Government fight fraud and it’s not just data from the credit file that helps. GB Group has been helping Local Government identify properties missing from the Council Tax register, for example, to help ensure that a fair level of tax is collected for properties they serve.

As my colleague Paul Fox observes, the real savings will come from the work around prevention of error in the processes and data management in the DWP. Fraud prevention is the emotive “headline grabber” for an Experian, but GB Group is all about helping get the data right up front and simplifying the process of proof of identity of the claimant before they access a benefit. This also of course will make it easier for the deserving to receive the benefits they need.

We’re all up for some good PR and benefits fraud is a good headline grabber. Well done Experian for getting more out of the headlines than David Cameron! The hard yards for the Government, DWP and its suppliers, however, will be reaching beyond the management of existing fraud and get the upfront processes right to prevent it happening in the first place. This is where GB Group and the serious players can really help. Let’s hope that once the headline grabbers have settled down we can all help Ian Duncan Smith with the real savings offered by making the process of claiming benefits simple and accurate in the first place.

Then we can all worry about Experian interrogating our spending habits without our permission...

Nick

It was strangely disturbing to read that Martha Lane Fox is going to get us all on-line by 2015.  My daughter was really non-plussed by this as she is on-line all the time – and quarter past eight is when she gets up to make her 8.30AM college classes.  My mum, however, is waging a single woman war against  the Internet.  Why shop on line when you can stand in a cold bus queue for an hour, pursuing a packet of sausages with the same grizzly determination that was once a feature of our hunter gatherer ancestors.

My generation stands neatly in the middle of this culture and technology clash.  I can’t understand how my daughter can operate three internet devices simultaneously – or indeed why she wants to.  Equally I am frustrated by my mother’s obstinate refusal to stop writing letters that need stamps or engage with technology that would help her in so many routine tasks.  Now my mother likes a cause and doesn’t like to lose.  I remember when the last - or last but one - Government tried to take her pension book away.   The idea of course was that the Department of Social Security (at the time, DWP now) and the Post Office would finally embrace the inevitable and instead of printing very expensive and easy to defraud pension books they would pay benefits straight into your bank account.    My mother would have none of this and campaigned (yes, in writing, with stamps) to maintain her right to a pension book.  She was quite infirm at the time, so she couldn’t actually collect the pension using the book and so I would have to grab some time from work,  go and queue at the Post Office, take the money out – and, yes, cross the road to pay it into her bank.  Looking back on this now she was either a passionate defender of the right to choose - or she really didn’t like me very much.

So Martha, you might think your challenge is trying to get BT or whoever to lay thousands of miles of thicker cable, but your real battle will be to make the internet easier to use.  This isn’t just about clicking on the internet explorer icon, it’s about the complexity and time it takes to register for services (anyone ever forgotten their 128 character HMRC log-on – only about 10 million or so of us on March 30th), filling in on-line forms, proving identity and working out which bit of information will be needed by which service provider.  It’s not so much Big Brother watching you, as the whole House and Davina McCall too.   Press the wrong key too many times and you get evicted...

At GB we’re pioneering the use of on-line identity tokens and working to make the process of accessing services across the internet easier.  We can see the value of the “single sign on” process but this time outside the enterprise IT environment.   This will allow citizens to choose what services to access, what information to share and will not need them to constantly repeat the registration process as they cross between booking a refuse collection with your local authority, paying your TV license or shopping for exotic holidays.  This is going to make the process of transacting online safer, easier and transfer more control to the citizen.

Martha, if my mother is to use the internet to order services she will need a clear incentive and the process will need to be simple.  Otherwise these silver not-quite-yet surfers will be collecting their stamps and will be out to write to you.  With pens.  And ink.  These are dangerous adversaries and they fight dirty.  Good luck.

Nick

As more of our clients employ us to improve their identity management processes, we’ve found some new life in one of our old product offers

GB was one of the first companies to bring to market  address lookup software, based on the UK postcode file.  This was a relatively simple offer: marketing departments understood that accurate addressing was vital to reduce mailing costs and improve customer service, and companies like GB could deliver the data in an efficient way and also keep it (relatively) up to date

The move to electronic commerce and new marketing channels has changed the rules here. Whilst the postal address is still important, marketers have understood that email and SMS communications, if highly personalised, make more sense economically and are appreciated by many consumers. GB had already moved its address management product online, as it allowed clients to receive real time updates of new data, and it also made integration into their own IT systems quicker. It’s been a relatively simple step from there to also provide capture and validation of other key identity information that is critical to business processes - email, telephone and mobile numbers or customer preference data.

GB’s historical expertise in address management has therefore been extended to the complete customer registration process. This is really the start of the Identity Management journey: getting customer information right at the initial point of contact, whether via the web, call centre, or retail site, really is best practise. GB can help ensure that our customers can respond to their customers’ preferences and ensure that all the data you capture, is accurate, current and valuable.

After all, why not start your customers' journey with the right map!