Flickr photo by David Neubert
Last year, the federal government identified $110 billion in improper payments. The money went to the wrong person, was paid at the wrong time, wasn't the right amount or went to someone that wasn't entitled or eligible to receive the money.
PaymentAccuracy.gov shows "the rates and amounts of improper payments for each agency, the targets each agency has set for reducing and recovering improper payments, and the names of the designated accountable official at each agency responsible for meeting those targets," Office of Mangement and Budget Director Peter Orszag wrote in a blog post about the new site.
The site is part of a broader federal effort to combat fraud, waste and abuse using technology. Data.gov increases transparency by opening federal data to the public, as does recovery.gov. The technology that feeds recovery.gov also enables federal analysts to more easily spot improper activity, according to an example at the bottom of this fact sheet (PDF):
A complaint was received through the Recovery Board Fraud Hotline in which an individual claimed he had insider knowledge of Recovery Act contracts being awarded to preferred contractors without being competitively bid.
Using the Recovery Operations Center’s state-of-the-art analytical platform, an analyst queried the information in the hotline complaint and discovered several interesting non-obvious relationships between the subject of the complaint and other entities. The subject named in the complaint was affiliated with nearly half a dozen other companies (operating under the same parent company but in different addresses and with different DUNS numbers). Also using the analytical platform, the analyst determined that four of the five companies identified had been debarred for fraudulent activities. The subject was also determined to have been previously debarred, as were several of his close relatives. The one company that was not debarred was the recipient of the Recovery Act award in question. Finally, the analyst was able to determine that the award was given within a matter of days after the other affiliated companies were debarred. The analyst then used the platform to “build out” a timeline of these activities.”
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