Our Quarterly Issue 7

Welcome from Esther Bogaart

Welcome to the jam-packed Issue 7 of the Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre’s quarterly newsletter.

This week was International Fraud Awareness Week. Our online live events and external presentations were attended by over 1,000 federal, state and territory government officials this year. Thank you to those who joined us in raising awareness of fraud and minimising its impact.

This quarter, we have been designing, commencing and finalising a range of Centre projects. We’re very excited to have launched the new Grants Administration Counter Fraud Toolkit to assist grants managers to build fraud prevention and detection into each stage of the grants lifecycle – see more on this below.

We also released our tiered service offer to better showcase how entities can obtain support from us. I invite you to explore our tiered service offer to learn how we can support you to build upon your capability. This includes help with risk assessments, pressure testing, data sharing and building a counter fraud narrative.

We are looking to launch two new Communities of Practice in December. One will focus on fraud prevention, while the other will cover fraud detection and measurement. Register your interest today via the contact us form.

We are also making progress on building fraud data and information sharing capability across government. Our new Fraud Data Capability Strategy involves developing an assessment tool to help you benchmark your fraud data capability (based on the APS Data Profession’s Data Capability Framework) as well as new guides, toolkits and services to help you improve your capability. Discover more about how we can help with data sharing in the article below.

New Grant Administration Counter Fraud Toolkit

It is crucial to consider fraud risks when designing and delivering grants programs. While grants are necessary to achieve key government objectives, they also carry fraud risks. These risks are often elevated when a grant program is designed and delivered rapidly and/or with limited resources. This toolkit will help Australian Government officials to:

• increase their awareness of fraud vulnerabilities in grants administration
• understand how these vulnerabilities might be open to fraud
• identify useful countermeasures to prevent, detect and respond to fraud.

Access our New Grant Administration Counter Fraud Toolkit

Data Sharing - we can help!

Do you want to engage in data sharing collaborations to fight fraud? We can help!

Learn more about data sharing collaborations

Lessons from preventive health approaches

Understand what lessons counter fraud teams can learn from preventive health policies and programs.

2020 and 2021 stakeholder survey results

Check out the results from the 2020 and 2021 Stakeholder Surveys of the Centre!

Eyes bigger than their stomach: the impact of fraud in the Australian food market

From paddock to plate - and where in between? The human and industry impacts of food fraud.

The human impact of fraud - new paper from researchers at Macquarie University

Fraud is a prevalent crime in Australia, one which targets specific groups of vulnerable people. Its economic impacts and costs are estimated to amount to up to AU$3 billion annually. However, there exist a number of non-financial harms of fraud which are not fully understood in Australia.

In this white paper, the authors review critical research and policy contributions to assess the need for further understanding of the non-financial effects of fraud on victims and their communities.

The findings suggest that, unlike partner countries such as the UK, there is a significant lack of understanding with regards to the totality of the harm and consequences of fraud in Australia. This white paper aims to be a first step towards redressing this balance.

Read more about the paper on the Macquarie University website.

Call for speakers (submissions close 9 December 2021)

The Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference (APSACC) is Australia’s leading anti-corruption event that will be held next year in November 2022 in Sydney.

This 2-day conference will bring together Australian and international anti-corruption experts to speak on risk identification and management, emerging trends and innovative approaches to combat corruption and heighten workplace integrity systems.

The APSACC call for speakers is now open with submissions closing Thursday 9 December 2021. Abstracts are welcome based on operational knowledge, successes in minimising corruption, organisation reform, actual investigations, case studies, and primary and secondary research. Practitioners, executives, CEOs, and academics from relevant fields are encouraged to apply.

Learn more about APSAC’s call for speakers, including presentation themes and formats, what to include in your submission, and how to submit your abstract on APSACC website.