Outcomes from the Fraud Capability Baseline Project

The Fraud Capability Baseline Assessment was a major project for the Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre in 2019–20. We worked with 19 different Commonwealth programs and functions across 16 entities to capture statistics about fraud exposure, counter fraud capability and educate participants about fraud threats and common countermeasures. The assessment helped us build an evidence base on how entities deal with fraud. It also helped us understand how to better help government entities to build their fraud prevention capabilities.

Once the detailed assessment was completed, we produced individual program reports that helped each participating area to understand their counter fraud strengths and weaknesses and opportunities for future improvements.

We also held follow-up meetings with each program to discuss their experience of participating in the assessment and next steps to improve their fraud resilience.

The assessment results showed that:

• counter fraud capability varies widely across the Australian Government
• Australian Government entities are overconfident in their abilities to counter fraud
• providing counter fraud education is an effective tool to combat overconfidence
• Australian Government entities have similar strengths and weaknesses in fraud countermeasures
• some entities lack knowledge about particular types of fraud to which they are exposed
• participants have similar priorities for help from the Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre.

We are using the results of the assessments to consider future areas of focus to best meet stakeholder needs. These include:

• designing approaches and guidance that can be applied at an entity and program level
• taking into account varying levels of counter fraud capability
• providing networking and information sharing opportunities.

Participants commented that the assessment helped them to understand their area’s counter fraud capability, exposure and vulnerabilities and provided them with valuable insights. Participants also commented that the report provided them with very useful insights and helped them with internal conversations about fraud in their entities.

We have completed a Baseline Outcomes Report that is available on request. Contact us for a copy of the Baseline Outcomes Report.

You can also contact us if you would like to get involved in stage 2 of the Fraud Capability Baseline Assessment in early 2021 or for more information.

Author: Deanne Allan and Lucia Felicetti-Clark