Centre updates Our April-June 2022 achievements
We hosted the Trilateral Counter Fraud Summit
We hosted a week-long event with counter fraud staff attending from Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The members, who are all a part of the International Public Sector Fraud Forum, came together to share experiences and good practices in countering fraud from their home countries.
We published new counter fraud products
We released two new data-focused publications. The Fraud Data Analytics Leading Practice Guide, which provides a framework and principles for implementing leading practice fraud data analytics, and the Fraud Data Analytics Catalogue of Techniques, which will provide helpful direction on the types of analytics techniques to explore, and some examples of when and how to deploy them.
The Centre also gathered and analysed enterprise-level fraud risk data from across 15 Australian Government entities to develop the new Commonwealth Risk Profile. This profile is similar to the fraud risk register and enables the Centre to analyse and map common elements of fraud, such as risk categories, enablers and mitigations across the Australian Government.
The Centre has collaborated with international and domestic partners to release the latest International Public Sector Fraud Forum publication - A Guide to Pressure Testing. This guidance complements our Commonwealth Framework and is timely considering that from 1 July 2022, the Commonwealth Risk Management Policy will require Commonwealth entities to regularly review the effectiveness of controls.
To access these documents please contact us.
We created an Australian Government Fraud Prevention Narrative
We hosted three roundtable narrative discussions on:
- shifting the counter fraud culture,
- data sharing, and,
- fraud considerations during policy design.
The engagement of the attendees during the conceptual discussions was fantastic. Thanks to all who attended. The roundtable discussions provided the ingredients for the development of an Australian Government Counter Fraud Narrative. This draft narrative was tested and endorsed by our Commonwealth Senior Officers Fraud Forum (CSOFF) members. A common fraud prevention narrative will help officials in the Australian Public Service communicate the current and future challenges it is facing in countering fraud, and influence how these challenges, and potential solutions, are understood and treated by the Government and senior APS officials. You can also build upon this narrative within your own context for strategic discussions or briefings.
Please contact the Centre if you would like a copy of the cross-government fraud prevention narrative.
We are preparing to review the Commonwealth Fraud Control Framework
The Centre owns, and provides implementation advice on, the Commonwealth Fraud Control Framework. It was last updated in 2017 and is no longer fully aligned with leading practice and industry standards. We aim to review and update the framework in 2022–23, with a focus on the Fraud Policy. We have planned our approach this quarter, and it will involve consultation with our stakeholders in the next financial year.
We continued to support networking between our stakeholders
Between April and June, we coordinated a variety of stakeholder governance and networking events. This included our Band 2 committee (Commonwealth Senior Officers Fraud Forum – CSOFF), our Band 1 committee (Counter Fraud Reference Group - CFRG) and two Communities of Practice. The meetings were well-attended and covered important topics including governance arrangements, narratives and upcoming projects.
We have continued to represent Australia at the International Public Sector Fraud Forum (IPSFF). Australia is co-chairing the new IPSFF data sub-group, and we have opened membership to a range of other Australian Government entities. We also supported representatives from Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office to present to an IPSFF Deep Dive on Behavioural Insights for Fraud Control.
We focused on improving the fraud evidence base
Centre officials have been working closely with the Australian Institute of Criminology on their annual fraud census. We negotiated improvements based on stakeholder feedback and data analysis. The 2021–22 census will be shorter and easier to complete. We are working with the AIC to create user feedback methods and continuously improve the fraud census. Please get in contact if you’d like to be involved in user testing for the upcoming census.