Internal Revenue Services Enhances Compute Power to Bolster Fraud Detection Efforts
With fraud detection being a key priority for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the agency is taking on some bold efforts to enhance overall compute power through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud capabilities to address the challenge.
According to a recent Government Computer News article, the IRS’ Office of Research, Applied Analytics and Statistics (RAAS) increased processing speeds 10-fold during a pilot test of a GPU-acceleration platform.
Thanks to the recent integration between the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) and NVIDIA, the IRS built a cluster for its fraud-detection algorithm and ran a dataset of about 4 terabytes against it. The combined platform enables accelerated and scalable big data pre-processing, and workflows without code changes.
This effort underscores IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig’s written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee for the filing season and COVID-19 recovery hearing on April 13, 2021.
“Importantly, the IRS is using technology to develop new enforcement tools. Our advanced data and analytic strategies allow us to catch instances of tax evasion that would not have been possible just a few years ago. We also recognize that we must evolve our enforcement efforts to address new types of tax fraud and criminal behavior,” said Rettig in his testimony.
In addition, Makpar has developed solutions to mitigate fraud for federal agencies. The company’s Innovation Lab developed a Fraud Detection Analytics Dashboard proof of concept to prevent another “short squeeze” that was applied to hedge funds by retail investors impacting GameStop’s stock price earlier this year.
A critical element in the development of this dashboard was the use of Pragmatic Agile development, and human-centered design – along with a swarm methodology – that reinforces how Makpar’s Innovation Lab is on the cutting-edge of developing next-generation, mission-enabling solutions for government.
These types of solutions are becoming very timely as government continues to be a top target for fraudsters. The top five areas of fraud against government are in the areas of university enrollment schemes, tax evasion, securities fraud, as well as defense and healthcare fraud – all of which are keeping the Department of Justice (DoJ) very busy.
For example, for fiscal year 2020, the DoJ obtained more than $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government. Nearly $1.8 billion of these settlements involved the health care industry, including drug and medical device manufacturers, managed care providers, hospitals, pharmacies, hospice organizations, laboratories, and physicians.
With government being a major target for fraud, thankfully there are a wide-range of industry solutions that can help mitigate this ongoing challenge.
To learn more about Makpar’s Fraud Detection Analytics dashboard, please listen to this recent podcast. You can also read the full case study about Makpar Fraud Detection Analytics Dashboard here. In addition, if you are a federal agency in need of a similar dashboard, please click here to contact Makpar’s team.