The top watchdog overseeing more than $5 trillion in pandemic-related spending says Congress is expanding a data analytics platform, currently used to investigate COVID relief fraud, to help save abnormal spending across federal spending.
The Pandemic Analysis Center of Excellence (PACE) was created as part of the American Rescue Plan to combat fraud through a combination of public, private, and advertising data sources.
Michael Horowitz, chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and the Justice Department’s inspector general, said the PRAC used the analytics system, among other things, to uncover $5. 4 billion in pandemic loans that received “questionable” Social Security numbers.
The PACE formula supported more than 600 pandemic-related investigations at more than 40 law enforcement and inspector general organizations, according to Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
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With PACE’s investment set to expire in 2025, Horowitz suggested to Congress a law that would expand the formula and expand its powers, arguing that this is imperative to moving from a “pay and sue” style to one of fraud prevention.
“Congress makes it applicable to all federal spending,” Horowitz said. “There’s no explanation as to why this is limited to pandemic funding. “
He also argued that the extension would create a “super IG” that would seek to duplicate the existing day-to-day audit, investigation and oversight jobs of inspectors general. Like the PRAC itself, PACE is governed through the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE).
“Rather, it would simply ensure that GIs continue to have this critical fraud prevention tool,” Horowitz said.
The Government Accountability Office reported earlier this year that agencies are adopting stricter anti-fraud controls to help prevent their bills from improving in the wake of historic pandemic-related fraud. The GAO also reports that Congress creates a permanent analysis center of excellence to assist the watchdog. The network identifies fraud and improvement invoices.
Rebecca Shea, GAO’s director of forensic audits and investigative service, said CAPC has helped build a framework of knowledge analysis expertise within PRAC. She has also coordinated 95 knowledge-sharing agreements, which watchdogs say are key to combating fraud.
“Significant upfront investment has been made in PACE, and it will be cost-effective to continue down this path,” Shea said. “CIGIE has the capacity to put those [memorandums of understanding] in place and knowledge analysis capabilities. “
The officials also argued that Congress would avoid a repeat of what happened in 2015, when it did not reauthorize the Recovery and Accountability Transparency Council, known as the RAT Council, created to oversee the 2009 stimulus package. Horowitz He said he was the inspector general’s “first-” knowledge analysis effort never before carried out in the entire community”.
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Six years after the RAT’s board of trustees expired, Congress included $40 million in the American Rescue Plan to fund PACE, so it can play a role in overseeing COVID-related relief spending.
“I think it would be a terrible end result if, once again, in two years, taxpayers had nothing to show for it, when they could literally save billions of dollars,” Horowitz said.
PACE analyzes records from more than 59 datasets, with express regulations governing their use and how they can be shared, according to Horowitz’s testimony.
For example, the center stores the Small Business Administration’s “non-public loan datasets” with 44 inspectors general and law enforcement agencies investigating fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID-19 Economic Disaster Loan Program (EIDL).
Hannibal Ware, the SBA’s inspector general, said the data-sharing agreements are aimed at preventing fraud.
“I understand the concerns of the Privacy Act, I understand that, but it could be for key reasons at key moments,” Ware said. “I feel like [COVID] would have been a key moment that would have allowed us to put controls in place early on and not end up with the pay-and-chase style that we’re in now. “
While agencies prioritized the speed of their COVID relief programs, especially in the early months of the pandemic, Horowitiz questioned the perception that anti-fraud controls would particularly slow aid spending.
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“I don’t want to think that we had two choices, which I heard over and over again at the beginning of the pandemic: withdraw the cash today or wait weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to check it out,” he said. absurd There is a choice.
He added that once the cash is sent to a scammer, it is tricky to get it back, as they send it overseas, in cryptocurrencies, or to other places that are difficult to track and access.
“We want to work with executive agencies, OMB leaders and Congress to make sure that certain agencies are an analytics platform to prevent fraud before it happens,” Horowitz said.