We participate in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) as part of our fraud prevention and detection activities. This helps to protect public funds and ensure fairness. The NFI is a data matching exercise run by the Cabinet Office.
Data matching involves comparing sets of an organisation's data against other records held by the same or another organisation to see how far they match. A set of data might be, for example, payroll or benefits records.
The data is usually personal information. The data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency that requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.
Data matching is carried out under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. We do not need your consent under the UK GDPR for this processing because it is required by law.
All organisations participating in Cabinet Office data matching exercises receive a report of matches that they should investigate. This can help them detect instances of fraud, overpayments or underpayments and other errors, to take remedial action and update their records accordingly.
