Data Analytics

Recent financial and economic conditions have prompted greater scrutiny of government spending, highlighting the important role that oversight and law enforcement agencies play in identifying and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse. A number of these agencies are increasing their ability to do their work by using data analytics, which uses a variety of techniques to analyze and interpret data. For example, predictive analytic technologies can identify fraud and errors before payments are made, while data-mining and data-matching techniques can identify fraud or improper payments that have already been awarded so that agencies can work to recover those dollars.

Data Analytics and the Use of Computer-Assisted Auditing Techniques

The Data Analytics Group works with OIG audit teams to help improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of our audits. We use a sophisticated set of applications to automate the analysis of financial and nonfinancial data and conduct a series of logical relationship checks against several Board and CFPB databases and system applications. We currently have a catalog of computer-assisted auditing techniques programs, which we have developed to test financial and nonfinancial data for several of our prior audits. These can easily be modified and applied based on the needs of new audits. The current abilities of our computer-assisted auditing techniques programs include

• producing reports to detect potential false, inflated, or duplicate invoices or payments
• comparing data from separate systems to identify anomalies between them