Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of using new technology such as artificial intelligence to find and prevent fraud across the public sector.

The Cabinet Office’s Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) is investing in new technologies that will increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to detect and prevent fraud. This includes the use of predictive analytics, a field of AI, that uses supervised machine learning techniques to predict the likelihood of fraud within a given area of spending.

For example a recent Cabinet Office contract award to build a Single Network Analytics Platform for the public sector, features AI and ML capabilities. This platform is for use by public bodies to access data that will help them identify fraud and actors who present a threat.

The PSFA’s approach is to ‘test and learn’ and to carefully apply AI and ML where appropriate, each time proving its merits, and then expanding where a viable use case exists.