The concept of “crowd-sourced accountability” -- opening up data for the public to analyze and serve as the government’s eyes and ears to spot potential misuse of government funds -- offers intriguing possibilities.
But it also raises an important question for government officials, spanning the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the Government Accountability Office, federal agencies, states, and localities: How can the government manage a potential avalanche of input, sort through millions of comments and allegations, focus scarce resources for maximum impact, and safeguard citizens from potential harassment and false accusations?
One answer – both for speed and effectiveness – is to tap into existing models that federal agencies are using to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.
For example, the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) focuses on detecting and correcting improper payments in the Medicare fee-for-service program. Congress legislated a demonstration RAC program under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. According to the CMS Recovery Audit Contractor Website (http://www.cms.hhs.gov/RAC/), “The RAC demonstration program has proven to be successful in returning dollars to the Medicare Trust Funds and identifying monies that need to be returned to providers. It has provided CMS with a new mechanism for detecting improper payments made in the past, and has also given CMS a valuable new tool for preventing future payments.” Based on this success, CMS is rolling out the program in states across the country this year.
One important factor in the CMS program’s success has been applying technology to help auditors and investigators sort through large volumes of data to spot areas of fraud, waste, and abuse and trigger investigative action. This use of technology maps ties well to an idea request posted by the RATB during the recent National Dialogue on Recovery Act information technology solutions -- at http://www.thenationaldialogue.org/ideas/hotline-and-case-referral-solutions -- asking for hotline and case referral solutions. Additional related ideas were also posted to the Recovery Act National Dialogue at http://www.thenationaldialogue.org/ideas/protecting-stimulus-funds-from-fraud-waste-and-abuse.
More on this idea is posted at http://www.collaborativegov.org/MyBlog/recovery-act-accountability-harnessing-the-power-of-the-crowd.html
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