Piloting our Counter Fraud Practitioner Training Program

“The program content, balance and facilitators are excellent. I have already used some of the tools provided in the workplace. I have appreciated interacting with the group and [the] face-to-face approach. I suggest you get paid more for what you do.”

“It was really beneficial to receive and go through the resources that the Fraud Prevention Centre has created, I found them extremely informative and helpful for my role, and have provided them to colleagues as well when I returned to the office.”

“It was a good avenue to network and meet others from different agencies and get insights into how they manage fraud.” 

These are just a few of the participant testimonials from the recent Counter-fraud Practitioner Training Program pilot.

The pilot program is part of the Centre’s Learning and Development Strategy 2022-2025 (which can be requested at info@counterfraud.gov.au). It is one of the flexible delivery mechanisms the Centre offers, aimed at embedding counter-fraud leading practice guidance, tools and frameworks within entities, by upskilling its people.

Each day of the program featured a deep-dive into one of the following core disciplines:

The in-person workshops involved interactive individual and group activities, supported by a workbook. Some of these activities included:

• developing a brief narrative for the executive of their organisation to secure funding for a hypothetical counter-fraud and corruption capability uplift 
• using the Centre’s Strategic Fraud Risk Profiling Tool to help prioritise organisational efforts
• considering a business process map of a vendor payment system and using fraudster personas to map risks in the process
• articulating passively written risks into an active form using the Actor-Action-Outcome Model. This helped highlight how specifically framing fraud concerns created a more powerful message to communicate with executives and stakeholders
• using the Centre’s Fraud Control Catalogue to identify current controls their organisation already had in place to counter a hypothetical risk

The final day culminated in a red team versus blue team simulated scenario where participants enthusiastically applied their learnings from across the program.

Throughout the program, participants were provided a number of practical tools, case studies, leading practice guides and frameworks to assist them and their entities prevent fraud. They were also offered coaching assistance to implement counter fraud measures within their entities.

The level of engagement, robust discussion, sharing of experiences and feedback received from participants made the workshops extremely rewarding to deliver as well as participate in.

After such a successful pilot program, the Centre is excited to announce we are taking the training wheels off the pilot and launching 4 additional Counter Fraud Practitioner Training Programs in 2023 for our communities of practice. If you have been part of our communities of practice and are interested but have not yet received an email, please reach out via info@counterfraud.gov.au.

We anticipate there will be more to come for our broader counter-fraud community in 2024.

Author: Adriana Wlodarczyk