Over the past three years, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) and its data analytics center have demonstrated the ability to prevent fraud and improper payments, and to assist law enforcement in pursuing billions of dollars in fraud. If the PRAC’s data analytics center had been in place in March 2020 at the outset of the pandemic, we would have been able to do critical data analysis upfront before payments were made to help prevent the billions of dollars of pandemic relief funds that were wasted through improper payments and fraud.
It is critical that the Inspector General community maintain the data analytics capability of the PRAC beyond the PRAC’s scheduled sunset date of September 30, 2025, so that the Inspector General community has an effective analytics platform to oversee federal spending. It would be a wasted opportunity to allow this fraud fighting tool to expire, as happened with the Recovery Operations Center in 2015.
I support the bipartisan legislation, the “Government Spending Oversight Act of 2024,” which represents an important step forward in maintaining this valuable fraud prevention and fraud fighting tool. I thank Chairman Gary Peters and Senator Mitt Romney for their bipartisan leadership on this good government initiative that will improve the integrity of federal programs, and protect taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud, and abuse. I look forward to working with the entire Committee and other Members of Congress to advance this important reform, and to making data analytics support and services available to the entire Inspector General community, as the PRAC’s analytics platform transitions from fighting pandemic-related fraud to preventing and curbing waste in other government spending programs.
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The PRAC was established by the CARES Act to promote transparency and support independent oversight of the funds provided by the CARES Act and other related emergency spending bills. In addition to its coordination and oversight responsibilities, the PRAC is tasked with supporting efforts to “prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement [and] mitigate major risks that cut across program and agency boundaries.”
If you have additional questions, please contact Lisa Reijula at lisa.reijula@cigie.gov