Higher education is risky business

In many discussion about fraud, fraud prevention and fraud detection I seem to miss an aspect that is integral to both prevention and detection: the existence of good and transparent information management practices. Information management as a field of work and expertise is quite often not given sufficient consideration by University executives. It is often assumed to ‘just happen’, and is often overseen by the IT department rather than a dedicated information management unit (which often springs from the traditional records management & archives unit). This quite often leads to information silos, warrens and rabbit holes in the University’s information management framework, which can be used to their advantage by fraudsters. Information is a key resource for Universities, and if we want to wield it in a way that makes fraud more difficult to undertake and easier to detect, we need to start managing it more transparently, efficiently and effectively.