Data matching strikes out fraud Author: Ben Woodhead Date: 11/05/2006 The Financial Review, Page: 47
Pensioners are among those welfare recipients who will be targeted by the federal government's growing electronic data-matching regime, after the Department of Human Services announced it would review the real estate assets of 120,000 pension recipients.
The project will link fraud detection computer systems used by agencies within the department to state and territory land title offices in an effort to ensure pensioners are declaring all of their real estate assets.
It will also be used to track property valuations, and is expected to generate net savings of $119.1 million over four years.
The program is one of a number of data-matching initiatives disclosed in the federal budget, which allocated $282.3 million over five years to activities aimed at detecting fraud in the social security system.
Funding for data matching has been provided in the past four federal budgets, and the latest cash injection will help generate expected net savings of $266 million over five years.
Systems already in place include a Department of Employment and Workplace Relations online reporting system that enables benefit recipients to update incorrect records over the internet.
Centrelink has also received several rounds of funding, and the federal government announced on Tuesday it had allocated the agency a further $5.1 million in capital for anti-fraud computer systems in this year's budget.
The beefed-up computer systems will be used to target fraudulent disability support pension claims and undeclared marriage-like relationships, and increase the number of fraud investigations resulting from tip-offs.
A further $5 million will be spent to introduce data matching between Centrelink and the Department of Health and Ageing under a program that is aimed at targeting carers who are fraudulently claiming benefits.
The program will detect whether or not the claimed care recipient has been placed in an aged-care facility such as a hostel or nursing home, and is expected to deliver net savings of $13.7 million over four years.
Centrelink also received funding for several pilot programs aimed at identifying opportunities to share data with the Australian Taxation Office, the Child Support Agency and Medicare Australia.
The ATO pilots, worth a combined $5.7 million, will test the feasibility of using data matching to target government payment recipients who do incorrectly report income from investments such as shares and term deposits.
They will also examine matching between Centrelink data and ATO data contained in GST statements and business activity statements.
Centrelink, the CSA and Medicare Australia will spend $2.2 million over two years to investigate the use of data-mining technologies for tracking down incorrect payments.
An additional $2.6 million over four years was provided to streamline internal data transfers between Department of Human Services member agencies.
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