You are here: silicon.com > Public Sector > News

Lie detector beats benefit fraud

Pilot saves £110,000 in just three months...

Tags: benefits, harrow, fraud, voice recognition

By Tim Ferguson

Published: 3 September 2007 16:51 BST

A trial of lie-detecting voice recognition technology to combat benefit fraud has saved a council £110,000 - and could lead to a national rollout of the system.

Harrow Council in Greater London has been running the £63,000, year-long pilot of the voice recognition analysis (VRA) system since May to identify potentially fraudulent housing benefit or council tax discount claims.

The VRA system is already used in the insurance industry and works by detecting stress patterns - such as hesitation or changing of answers - in the voice of callers to indicate whether they might be lying.

silicon.com Public Sector

Get the latest public sector news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the PS newsletter today!

So far, the tech saved Harrow Council around £110,000 in benefits payments. It has helped to identify 126 incorrectly awarded single person council tax discounts - worth £40,000 - and prompted 304 claims to be reviewed.

Of these, 47 were found to be no longer valid, meaning the council saved another £70,000 in benefit entitlements.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - which funded the pilot - told silicon.com the department will evaluate the technology when the trial is completed next May.

He said the DWP will "look at the evaluation results and see if it's viable, see if it's something to work on and see if other councils are interested in doing it".

If the benefits are seen as sufficient, the system could potentially be rolled out across the country, although no firm plans are currently in place.

The DWP is arranging for other local authorities to trial the technology in the coming months.

The government estimates benefit fraud cost around £700m in the financial year 2006/07, while Harrow Council alone lost £250,000 through fraudulent claims over the same period.

A Harrow Council statement said local authorities have a duty to catch fraudsters due to the financial restraints they face and the lie detector technology is "another tool to help achieve this goal".

  1. Zones
  2. Management
  3. Networks
  4. Software
  5. IT Services
  6. Hardware
  1. Verticals
  2. Public Sector
  3. Financial Services
  4. Retail & Leisure

silicon.com Public Sector
Get the latest public sector news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the PS newsletter today!


  • Jobs
Benefit Assessor

Processing all types of housing and council tax benefit claims within strict guidelines. Maintaining a thorough knowledge of Housing & Council Tax ...

IT Graduate

The many corporate organisations Northgate works closely with include over 20% of fortune 500 clients ,90% of the UK local authorities and all of the ...

Home Access Programme Manager

(Education, ICT, Programme Manager, Senior Project Manager, Home Access, Local Authorities, MSP, Blueprint) A successful pilot has been in launched ...

Nick Heath
Next stop HMRC: How TfL CIO will shake up the taxman
Interview: Phil Pavitt, CIO Transport for London, on making IT boring

Gary Bettis
Public sector CIOs: It's your time to shine
Comment: Efficiency programme offers big challenges and opportunities

Gary Lynch
How e-coding can prevent NHS slip-ups
Barcodes to run in their blood

silicon.com
Inbox: Chip and PIN latest big IDea - and still no readers
"PIN numbers do not present much of a challenge to a determined crook"

Jo Best
From army officer to IT chief - CPS CIO David Jones
Profile: What IT and the military have in common

silicon.com
Inbox: Government IT ignoring red lights?
"The civil servants who specify these projects are not competent technically"

Agenda Setters 2008
Welcome to the ninth annual Agenda Setters poll – silicon.com's list of the top 50 most influential individuals in the technology and IT industries, from techies and CIOs to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Find out more in our latest special report.




Quick Sitemap Links: