A key priority for the Department is to ensure that fraudulent activity within the social welfare system is vigorously prevented and combated. The Department has a number of ICT systems which have been developed over many years to enable it to pay multiple groups of clients and manage data in relation to its various schemes. These systems reliably deliver over 87 million payments yearly between them. Although developed independently, mechanisms exist on its major systems whereby significant changes made to customer or claim details are automatically notified to other relevant systems. The Department is working towards consolidation on a single ICT ‘platform’ - the Business Object Model implementation - BOMi. This work is carried out as part of the Department’s continuous Service Delivery Modernisation programme. As this programme progresses, all of the Department’s client and claim-related systems will be integrated on the BOMi platform, ensuring that all client and claim information is fully and automatically available across all of the Department’s schemes and places of business.
Not only does the Department work with the information held by ourselves, we also recognise the value of working closely and collaboratively with other agencies to ensure that social welfare abuse is comprehensively deterred and detected. Over the last number of years, the Department has engaged in a range of data matching exercises with other Government Departments and public bodies for control purposes. Data matching is viewed as an efficient and effective mechanism to target control-related activity and the Department is satisfied that it is an effective control tool.
The Public Services Card (PSC) was launched last year following a pilot process and its roll-out is well underway. To date, some 110,000 cards have been issued. From the Department’s perspective, as well as combating identity fraud, the PSC will replace cards currently in use, such as the Social Services Card and the Free Travel Card, with a highly secure card. The robust face-to-face registration process, leading to issue of a PSC incorporating both the person’s photograph and signature, gives significant assurance as to the identity of the cardholder. It will reduce the number of people who fraudulently claim to be someone else and will considerably reduce the potential for forgery.
For the information of the Deputy, biometric information is information about human body characteristics, such as fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns and hand measurements and it is typically used for authentication purposes. The PSC will store photographs and signatures. It could store biometric information although there are no plans to do so at present.
The Department has recently introduced electronic signing in local offices, replacing the existing paper-based system. The new system is designed to improve both the customer experience and the efficiency of the certification process. It is currently in the process of being implemented across the regional network and is now in operation in 33 local offices. The Department will continue to examine options to provide a range of signing options with a view to further improving the certification process.
Social Welfare fraud undermines public confidence in the entire system as well as being unfair to other recipients of Social Welfare payments and taxpayers. My Department is very conscious of its obligation to protect public money and is determined to ensure that abuse of the system is prevented and is dealt with effectively when detected.
