Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre – Australian Government
Overview: Fraud is a serious, underestimated and often unchecked problem. Fraud against Commonwealth entities is driven by many factors, including vulnerabilities in policies, processes and systems that enable opportunistic individuals to take advantage. Fraud is a profession for capable and committed criminals who actively look to exploit government systems and programs. Every Commonwealth entity is exposed to fraud of some form, but because it is usually hidden from sight, constantly changing and not well understood by most people, the risks and impacts of fraud are often underestimated and overlooked. If left unchecked, fraud can seriously harm Commonwealth programs, officials, service providers and members of the public.
Fraud risk assessments shed light in dark places, assisting officials to understand the risks and enable them to make better decisions about how to manage them. If an entity knows where it is vulnerable, it is better placed to design suitable countermeasures (also commonly called controls) to prevent fraud occurring or reducing the impact when it does.
Fraud risk assessment is a specialist area of risk management. Accurately assessing fraud risk is therefore a professional exercise that requires knowledge of fraud methods and enablers, risk management processes and an entity’s business processes and systems. The process requires coordination and collaboration across multiple business areas.
