Policy paper

DfE counter-fraud strategy overview: 2024 to 2027

Updated 2 August 2024

Applies to England

This document outlines the Department for Education (DfE)’s counter-fraud strategy for 2024 to 2027.

Strategy overview

Fraud poses a continuous threat. Raising awareness of fraud helps us to understand the risks and build controls to prevent funding being wrongly diverted from our priorities.

This strategy unifies counter-fraud efforts across DfE, to make sure that we have a coordinated response to fraud.

Cooperation within the department and with government bodies like the Public Sector Fraud Authority is essential for fraud prevention.

The strategy:

• focusses on a structured management of fraud to minimise losses and risks
• works alongside the fraud risk assessment
• targets prevention measures and engagement with advanced digital detection methods

Governance

Robust governance arrangements are in place. This means that the:

• Permanent Secretary is accountable to Parliament
• DfE Audit and Risk Assurance Committee oversee risk management
• fraud and error ream report on the strategy’s progress

Objectives

The strategy has 4 objectives aimed at supporting improvement against the Public Sector Fraud Authority’s continuous improvement assessment framework.

1. Prevent – we aim to identify the early threat of fraud through staff training, proactive involvement in business reviews and fraud risk assessments.

2. Protect – we will reduce our vulnerabilities by building relationships with cyber and data security teams and sharing best practices across government.

3. Prepare – we will take action to mitigate the impact of fraud when targeted, with a focus on recovery and learning from incidents.

4. Pursue – we will detect, disrupt and where possible, prosecute those who attempt or commit fraud against DfE.

We measure success against financial performance targets for prevented and recovered fraud.