Audit Commission offers £5m contract for next National Fraud Initiative

Independent watchdog the Audit Commission is looking for a company to provide it with data-processing services in a contract worth up to £5m.

The services will support a UK-wide data-matching exercise, the National Fraud Initiative (NFI), which is run by the Audit Commission every two years.

The NFI examines electronic data that is used within and between audited bodies, such as police authorities and local councils, to detect any instances of fraud.

"We require a managed service to deliver the NFI in a secure environment accredited against relevant government standards. This service will include the provision of data processing services to receive, read, re-format, clean, and match datasets," the Audit Commission explained in a tender.

Since 1996, the NFI has detected fraud, overpayments and errors totalling £750m.

The last NFI exercise took place between 2010 and 2011 and included 8,000 data sets from 1,300 public and private sector organisations. The Audit Commission expects similar amounts of data for the next data-matching exercise in 2012/2013.

The tender highlights that the contract may be "suitable for economic operators that are small or medium enterprises", but goes on to add that the decision will be based on the most "economically advantageous tender".

Companies looking to apply have until 1 August this year.