IT Spending To Prevent Government Waste Increases, Slightly

A new analyst report estimates that state governments will lose a whopping $67 billion this year alone to waste, fraud and abuse in government benefit programs. Despite drives to make government more efficient, however, spending on BI and other tech that can sniff out and prevent overspending is increasing slower than you might expect.Research firm INPUT estimates that state and local government demand for business intelligence and audit software looks to be on the rise, but at a relatively modest 7.6% compound annual growth rate expected between 2009 and 2014, slower than the market-wide increases in spending on any number of emerging technologies.

According to INPUT, several factors are working together to create this increased demand: the ever-present drive to save costs, stimulus-driven transparency and accountability initiatives, and increased demand for performance management technologies. Much of this comes from new or recently implemented government policies, from President Obama's transparency initiatives to last year's Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act.

INPUT includes a wide variety of technologies in its report, including biometric authentication, data mining and matching, data standardization, predictive modeling and fraud case management systems, among others.

Connecticut, for example, uses fingerprints to prevent double enrollment in welfare assistance. Texas has overlaid Medicaid spending data on mapping software, allowing it to determine which doctors attract patients from far away, which is a red flag for potential fraud. Many states now have fraud reporting Websites.

Going forward, INPUT expects anti-waste, fraud and abuse technology to shift more widely toward upfront ID authentication, data quality improvements and the use of shared services to identify and prevent the problems.