Washington, DC — Today, Michael E. Horowitz, Chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), announced the release of the PRAC’s Semiannual Report to Congress, which covers the period October 1, 2024, through March 31, 2025.
“I’m proud of the work that the PRAC, with the support of our partners, has done to advance transparency, accountability, and program integrity over the past five years. The PRAC’s data analytics tool has helped recover for the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars—far more than our total appropriation from Congress. Now, with three months remaining until our sunset, we urge Congress to maintain our data analytics center to assist agencies and the oversight community in fraud prevention,” said Chair Horowitz. “The PRAC’s valuable fraud-fighting tools can protect taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste, and abuse.”
The semiannual report updates Congress on our efforts to promote transparency, coordinate oversight, investigate pandemic fraud, and recover taxpayer dollars. It also highlights the extraordinary success of the PRAC’s Pandemic Analytics Center of Excellence (PACE) in identifying improper payments and fraud. The Government Accountability Office estimates a permanent data analytics center in the oversight community could result in a billion dollars or more in financial benefits annually.
Key PRAC accomplishments:
As of the publication of this report, the PRAC has provided investigative support to more than 49 federal law enforcement and Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) partners on over 1,100 pandemic-related investigations, with over 23,500 subjects and a potential fraud loss of $2.43 billion.
To date, the predictive risk model our data scientists built for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation OIG has resulted in $215 million in total civil and administrative recoveries.
Our analytics center supported the PRAC Fraud Task Force in a nearly $109 million pandemic fraud investigation resulting in two guilty pleas. Overall, the PRAC Fraud Task Force’s investigations have, to date, resulted in criminal charges against 117 subjects.
PRAC Executive Director Kenneth Dieffenbach testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Government Operations Subcommittee describing the PRAC’s use of data analytics to prevent improper payments and fraud.
We published Chapter Three and Chapter Four of our Blueprint for Enhanced Program Integrity—a resource guide for the oversight community, program administrators, and policymakers to build strong government programs. We also built an AI tool on our website that answers user questions using information from the Blueprint and other oversight reports.
During this reporting period, eight OIGs issued 43 pandemic oversight reports which identified over $727 million in monetary findings and made 145 recommendations to improve the government's response to the pandemic and future emergencies.
###
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.