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Audit Commission > National Fraud Initiative > Public sector > Frequently asked questions – NFI public sector

Frequently asked questions – NFI public sector

If you cannot find the answer to your question below, please contact a member of the NFI Team or email nfiqueries@audit-commission.gov.uk

Data submission

  1. How should data be submitted for NFI?
  2. Can I send data in an excel worksheet?
  3. How do I update contact details when they change?
  4. What are fair processing notices and where can I find more details about them?
  5. How do I progress matches to Home Office and Foreign & Commonwealth office data?
  6. What period should the trade creditor payments history data cover?
  7. In what format should the data be sent?
  8. We don’t collect a National Insurance number for concessionary travel passes so cannot comply with the data specification, what should we do?
  9. In previous NFI exercises we had to complete a progress return (Form 4) to inform you of the progress that we have made. What are the deadlines for NFI 2012/13?
  10. How should matches to deceased persons be progressed?
  11. When is  Council Tax and Electoral Register data required to be extracted and submitted?
  12. Do I need to submit data for schools in my area?

Data specification

  1. Should I include casual employees in the payroll data download?
  2. What should I enter in the ‘full time/part time indicator’ field on the payroll data specification?
  3. What should I enter in the ‘standard hours per week’ field on the payroll data specification?
  4. What should we put in the ‘creditor type’ field?
  5. The pension data specification includes a request for information on pensioners currently in receipt of a pension gratuity. Can you explain what you mean by a gratuity?
  6. What data do we need to submit in respect of personal alcohol licences and how should we extract it?
  7. How should I treat matches where the National Insurance number is the same 1 but the surname and forename of the two individuals are different?
  8. How do I use the tenant status flag in the Current Tenants data specification?
  9. How do I treat an employee who has more than one post within the authority?
  10. Why have you extended the mandatory fields for the NFI 2012/13 to include personal details such as telephone number? How will they help with the data matching?

General

  1. I cannot access the NFI web site address (https://www.nfi.gov.uk) how can I find out where the problem is occurring?
  2. Are fair processing notices required for trade creditors?
  3. Why can I not print or export NFI data?
  4. If we are planning to undertake a data matching exercise with an alternative external provider (i.e. not NFI), do we have to follow up the NFI matches?
  5. What if the alternative data matching (i.e. not NFI) has already commenced, do we have to follow up the NFI matches?
  6. But isn’t the Audit Commission being abolished?

Data submission

1. How should data be submitted for NFI?

A secure Data File Upload (DFU) facility is available within the NFI software from the link on the home page or the left hand menu. This enables you to upload your data quickly and easily. A password can also be added to this data. This is the only acceptable method of providing data for NFI.

2. Can I send data in an excel worksheet?

There are a number of risks associated with exporting data into Excel from the host system. However, given that it is by far the most commonly used data handling/recording application, we understand that it would make it easier for many to be able to submit data in Excel format. Therefore, whilst we are prepared to accept Excel files, we recommend that you carry out the basic pre-submission data quality checks to ensure that the formatting issues below do not affect the quality of the data being submitted.

Some of the more common problems that can be encountered when using Excel are listed below:

  • Most versions of Excel have a maximum number of rows it can store in a spreadsheet. The below table illustrates the maximum number of rows for the different Excel versions. If this is exceeded then the data will be truncated when saved, resulting in a loss of records.
Excel Version Maximum number of rows
Excel 2.0 16,384
Excel 3.0 16,384
Excel 4.0 16,384
Excel 5.0 16,384
Excel 7.0 16,384
Excel 97 (version 8.0) 65,536
Excel 2000 (version 9.0) 65,536
Excel 2002 (version 10) 65,536
Excel 2003 (version 11) 65,536
Excel 2007 (version 12) 1,048,576
Excel 2010 (version 14) 1,048,576
  • Numeric strings of 16 digits or more are treated as numbers by default and only the first 15 significant figures are stored.
  • Leading zeros are removed from numeric strings, try typing ’01062007′ into a cell. This is a very common problem which can affect dates, invoice numbers, bank details etc.
  • Excel will automatically transform anything that looks like a date, however remotely, into a date. This causes problems with Bank_Sort_Codes using hyphens (type ’21-11-97′ into a cell) and house numbers if they are supplied in a different column to the street name (i.e. ’05-07′).

3. How do I update contact details when they change?

The Director of Finance is responsible for nominating and updating a key contact. The key contact is responsible for updating dataset and data download contact details. Contact details can be amended by accessing User Admin from the NFI home page or the link on the left hand menu of the NFI matches.

4. What are fair processing notices and where can I find more details about them?

The Data Protection Act 1998 normally requires participants to inform individuals that their data will be processed. Unless an exemption applies, for data processing to be fair, the first data protection principle requires data controllers to inform individuals whose data is to be processed of:

  1. The identity of the data controller.
  2. The purpose or purposes for which the data may be processed.
  3. Any further information that is necessary to enable the processing to be fair.

The provision of this information is known as a fair processing notice. Full details of what is required are set out in the code of data matching practice.

5. How do I progress matches to Home Office and Foreign & Commonwealth office data?

Guidance is provided within the NFI web application for each NFI report. The process can be found under ‘help’ within the web application software.

6. What period should the trade creditor payments history data cover?

Extract payments history data, based on invoice dates, from 1st April 2009 to date of extraction (for example, on or near 8 October 2012).

7. In what format should the data be sent?

This is set out in the in the file format instructions, but data should be in ASCII format if possible. If comma separated value (csv) records are submitted, please ensure that any commas ( , ) appearing within any of the data fields are converted to a pipe ( | ), or other delimiter, and inverted commas ( ‘ ) are excluded. If you require any further guidance please contact the technical support team at our Data Centre by calling 0845 345 8019.

8. We don’t collect a National Insurance number for concessionary travel passes so cannot comply with the data specification, what should we do?

The National Insurance number has been included in the specification to enable bodies that already hold them to supply this very useful piece of information. Where the National Insurance number is not already held, there is no requirement for additional work to be undertaken to collect it, unless you want to. When supplying this data simply leave this field blank (blank fields are referred to in our data format instructions).

9. In previous NFI exercises we had to complete a progress return (Form 4) to inform you of the progress that we have made. What are the deadlines for NFI 2012/13?

As you are now recording your outcomes in real-time, the NFI Team and external auditors can run outcomes reports at any point during the exercise. Therefore, you did not need to submit the old-style progress returns for NFI 2010/11 and they will not be needed for 2012/13. However, you may want to set some internal milestones so we suggest using:

  • 31 May 2013 – you should have selected the matches you intend to investigate
  • 30 September 2013 – you should have completed some cases, recorded prosecutions and outcomes on the web application and notified the NFI Team of good practice examples or case studies
  • 31 March 2014 – the majority of investigations will be completed and cases closed on the NFI web application

Subject to any changes resulting from a move to a new owner, we plan to take a final position statement in spring 2014 so we can start to draft the national report scheduled for a June 2014 publication. This is a little later than usual to avoid local elections.  Please ensure that any interesting cases that you would be happy to have published are highlighted within the web application at this point.

10. How should matches to deceased persons be progressed?

All NFI referrals are issued as potential anomalies that warrant careful consideration before action is taken. This is particularly important in the case of the deceased matches where investigators need to be especially sensitive in order to avoid causing upset and distress.

NFI uses advanced techniques to identify exact and almost exact matches (fuzzy matching for example to identify slight misspellings of one element of the name). Although this has proved hugely successful, for example NFI 2010/11 identified over 3,000 cases where an occupational pension continued to be paid after the death of the pensioner, investigators must assess each match carefully before deciding how best to proceed as there is a risk, as with all data matching, that a match relates to different persons. For example:

  • On pension to deceased person matches, we continue to identify a small number of matches where the pension scheme did not update the National Insurance number when the former employee passed away and they began paying the widow/widower, leading to an NFI match based on the National Insurance number with the former employee.
  • A miss-keyed date of birth on one record leads to an exact match with a different person.

The suggested guidance for deceased matches (Appendix 2 of the NFI guidelines) suggests that for pension payments to deceased person matches, a death certificate is obtained before any direct action is taken. We accept that this is not likely to be a practical solution for all deceased matches, for example to blue badge holders. In such circumstances we recommend that rather than writing to all individuals in the NFI report to request the return of the badge (and risking causing upset and distress), participating bodies instead make contact in the context of confirming the accuracy of information held.

In the majority of cases this will result in you being informed of the death of the permit holder and you can progress recovery. You can then focus attention on the remaining cases where you are not informed of the death in order to establish whether details of the death have simply not been provided or the match relates to a different person.

11. When is Council Tax and Electoral Register data required to be extracted and submitted?

We will be matching electoral register to council tax in the alternate year to the main NFI exercise. The latest set of matches were released in early 2012 and so the next set of matches will not be released until early 2014. This means we will be collecting council tax data in October 2013 and electoral register data in December 2013. The launch of the NFI flexible matching service provides an opportunity for local authorities to match council tax and electoral register data annually, the first opportunity to do this will be in October 2012 and we will be contacting bodies with further information on this.

12. Do I need to submit data for schools in my area?

Payroll data for schools within the authority’s control (ie those where the teachers are employed by the Local Education Authority) should be uploaded together with your main payroll submission. Those in the authority’s control include voluntary controlled and community schools.

Any schools in your area which are not under your direct control such as those with Foundation or Academy status can still participate in NFI and benefit from the exercise but this would have to be on a voluntary basis. The options available to them are:

  • Participate as a voluntary body completely separate from the authority, or
  • Include their data with that of the authority but the results would be returned to the authority so the school would need to be clear that their matches would be available to authority investigators.

Data specification

1. Should I include casual employees in the payroll data download?

If they are still live on the payroll and have a gross pay to date this financial year greater than zero they should be included in the data extraction.

2. What should I enter in the ‘full time/part time indicator’ field on the payroll data specification?

Enter ‘F’ where 30 or more hours per week are worked, ‘P’ where less than 30 hours a week are worked or ‘C’ for casual/as-and-when staff.

3. What should I enter in the ‘standard hours per week’ field on the payroll data specification?

This should contain the hours the employee is contracted, for example, 3750 (= 37.5 contracted hours).

4. What should we put in the ‘creditor type’ field?

If your data submission only contains trade creditors then providing data in this field is not essential. However, populating this field it is important if you submit the different categories of creditor, such as expense claim payments or council tax refunds, as it will enable you to filter the output more easily and focus resources on what you may deem to be the most worthwhile matches. The inability to filter matches by creditor type was a major contributing factor to the large number of matches generated in the last exercise.

5. The pension data specification includes a request for information on pensioners currently in receipt of a pension gratuity. Can you explain what you mean by a gratuity?

We are referring to a monthly gratuity pension payment, sometimes referred to as a top-up pension. A common example is where authorities pay a monthly gratuity pension to former teachers, which is in addition to the main pension paid by the Teachers Pension Scheme.

6. What data do we need to submit in respect of personal alcohol licences and how should we extract it?

Data in respect of personal alcohol licences will assist in identifying where benefits are being incorrectly claimed. To do this matching we require the name and home address of the licence holder, plus the name of the premises at which they work. Because we need to know where the personal licence holder works you will only be able to provide data for individuals with personal licences who are also registered as designated premises supervisors.

If you populate your premises licence database with the designated premises supervisor’s home address then you may be able to get all of the data from this database. If not then you will need to cross-match the premises licence database and the personal licence database. Please note we only expect data in respect of designated premises supervisors registered by your authority (in other words, granted their personal licence by you), this way you should be able to provide the fields within the data specification, for example, address, reference number.

Before submitting the data you should remove any licence data for individuals where they are a designated premises supervisor at a major retail outlet, such as a large supermarket.

If you do not hold National Insurance numbers or dates of birth you should still submit the data but leave these fields blank.

7. How should I treat matches where the National Insurance number is the same1 but the surname and forename of the two individuals are different?

Where a match potentially shows two different people with the same National Insurance number they should not simply be ignored because they appear to relate to different people.

In most cases the match has occurred because of a data quality issue where one of the two matched systems holds the wrong National Insurance number. It is therefore important that you validate the number you hold and, where necessary, take action to correct the details held. It is also important to be aware that, although less likely, these matches may reveal cases of deliberate identity fraud rather than data quality issues.

1 – By this we mean the prefix (first 2 characters) and the 6 digits that follow are identical as this combination is allocated uniquely. The suffix (A, B, C or D) has no current relevance at all and exists for historic reasons.

8. How do I use the tenant status flag in the Current Tenants data specification?

The Tenants data specification includes all named tenants and the tenant status flag allows you to highlight the status of each individual.

If the individuals are joint tenants flag them both as ‘F’. The ‘O’ would usually be used on an older style contract which has a 1st tenant who would be flagged as ‘F’, and a 2nd or 3rd tenant who would be flagged as ‘O’. We only require tenants details so those living at the property who are not tenants, e.g. children, should not be provided.

9. How do I treat an employee who has more than one post within the authority?

There are two possible scenarios that could occur within your payroll system, an employee with:

  • multiple posts but one employee reference number
  • multiple posts and multiple employee reference numbers

We would ask that in both cases, you try and amalgamate the records so that you are providing one record per employee. Uploading data which includes more than one line per employee could cause multiple matches to the same individual, increasing investigation time and generating more queries from other participants.

In cases where an employee has more than one position or post but only one employee reference number please amalgamate the records using the employee reference number. This amalgamation should produce aggregated totals for both the gross pay to date and hours worked, if these figures are available. If your organisation has audit software such as IDEA or ACL then this task should be straightforward, we can talk you through this process if required.

If the employee has multiple posts and multiple employee reference numbers you should try and find a unique reference number within the system to identify and link them to provide the data on a one record for one employee basis. If this is not possible then the data should be supplied as it stands.

In the department code field you could include the details of both / all positions which would give the investigator more detail if the employee came back as a match. Otherwise include the department where the employee works for the majority of the time. Use the total gross pay to date that an employee has been paid by the organisation.

If the employee has more than one recorded bank account, include the bank account where the employee gets paid the majority of their pay.

10. Why have you extended the mandatory fields for the NFI 2012/13 to include personal details such as telephone number? How will they help with the data matching?

The primary purpose of including new fields in some of the data specifications is to review their effectiveness in improving the NFI data matching which can only be ascertained by first collecting and matching the data. We expect the additional data will improve existing matching rules, for example to confirm that a match where the address is different relates to the same person. In addition they are expected to generate new matches, for example two people with different names but the same telephone number may highlight the use of false identities.

The Commission has gone through a thorough internal governance process before introducing these additional fields which included a privacy impact assessment and approval by the Commissions Data Matching Strategy Board.

In line with the requirements of the Code of Data Matching Practice the inclusion of these fields is being piloted in NFI 2012/13. At the end of the NFI 2012/13 the impact of these new data, on the ability of NFI to prevent and detect fraud, will be fully evaluated.

It should be noted that the data itself will not be disclosed. Only where the use of the new data is deemed to enhance the matches will a flag be disclosed to participants confirming that the data matches.

As always all data provided for NFI I held securely and destroyed and rendered irrecoverable at the end of the exercise

General

1. I cannot access the NFI web site address – https://www.nfi.gov.uk/2012/login.aspx. How can I find out where the problem is occurring?

Call the technical helpdesk on 0845 345 8019 and they will be able to tell you if there is a problem with our communications links or hardware and when it is likely to be resolved.

2. Are fair processing notices required for trade creditors?

You will need to consider whether your trade creditors data provided to the NFI includes personal data, for example, sole trader creditors, and therefore if a FPN is required or not.

3. Why can I not print or export NFI data?

In order to protect the NFI data the matches are released in a secure environment. Because the print and export functions allow a user to take this data outside this secure environment they are initially restricted to Directors of Finance. If the Director of Finance feels these features are necessary to allow the key contact to carry out their NFI work effectively they can grant the print and/or export permissions via User Admin. Once permission is granted the key contact can extend these permissions to other users where required. It may be more appropriate to issue these permissions for specific authorised tasks and remove them once the task has been completed.

It is the responsibility of the Director of Finance and the key contact to control and monitor these permissions. On all occasions the data extracted should be the minimum amount necessary to achieve the intended purpose. It is also important to note that as soon as data is extracted from the secure NFI environment, your normal responsibilities for data security (including avoiding inappropriate disclosure and ensuring the data is irrecoverably destroyed when it is no longer needed) take effect. We would therefore encourage you to remind any user who is granted print and/or export permissions of your relevant policies and procedures.

To assist the Director of Finance and the key contact in monitoring these permissions, management information reports that record the use of the export function have been introduced. Further management information reports, including one listing all users who have these permissions, are in development. These can be accessed via the Management Info link within the left hand menu on the summary screen.

4. If we are planning to undertake a data matching exercise with an alternative external provider (i.e. not NFI), do we have to follow up the NFI matches?

Yes. Carrying out additional data matching exercises covering the same areas as NFI does not supersede looking at NFI matches.

NFI attracts a nominal one-off charge. There are no set up costs, joining fees or additional charges based on outcomes.

The extraction of the NFI datasets used for matching has been deliberately timed to ensure that the data is synchronised. Therefore, no matter how old the matches are, they should show two potentially conflicting declarations at exactly the same time.

Whilst we recognise that data matching exercises offered by external providers can have a role to play in the fight against council tax abuse, it is important that they are used effectively to supplement the work of NFI in order to avoid unnecessary expenditure. They do access data sources not available to NFI and as a result can identify additional cases of potential abuse. However our research has found that many data matches are common to both NFI and other data matching exercises, and also that NFI has flagged matches that these other services have not.

Therefore, in the interest of economy, you should follow up NFI matches first and afterwards consider whether other data matching exercises are appropriate.

5. What if the alternative data matching (i.e. not NFI) has already commenced, do we have to follow up the NFI matches?

Cases where fraud or error has been identified by the alternative data matching exercise should be checked against the NFI matches to give some indication as to the overlap. This should enable you to establish how much extra value the alternative data matching can give to supplement NFI matches and consequently inform your future strategy for tackling fraud and error prevention and detection.

For example, if NFI matches had identified all the same errors and frauds as the other exercise then you could conclude that it may be worth just following up NFI matches next time as this is a mandatory exercise at nominal cost. In any case looking at the NFI matches first should minimise the cost of any other exercises subsequently undertaken as you will have identified/corrected most of the frauds/errors in the data before it is passed for further matching.

A sample of the NFI matches not identified by the external exercise should be reviewed and, if any error or fraud is identified, a larger sample of NFI matches should be investigated. This will maximise your outcomes over both exercises.

6. But isn’t the Audit Commission being abolished?

Yes the government have announced the abolition of the Audit Commission. However NFI has been singled out as a significantly successful project and therefore will continue after the abolition. We can therefore confirm that NFI will not only continue to provide data matching solutions but will continue to expand into new areas in both the private and public sector