Payment Integrity: Public-Private Partnerships and the Payment Integrity Research and Analysis Capability Concept—Methodology for Analyzing Owner and Operator Alternatives

This report describes the relationship between Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and the Payment Integrity  Research and Analysis Capability (PIRAC) concept, and to describe a methodology for analyzing the Owner and Operator alternatives for a PIRAC. The use of PPPs and the PIRAC concept were key recommendations of the government-wide Payment Integrity study conducted by The MITRE Corporation (MITRE), a not-for-profit organization that operates federally funded research and development centers (FFRDC) on behalf of federal government sponsors. Identifying optimal alternatives for the critical functions of PIRAC Owner and Operator will provide the government with key information to facilitate implementation of the PIRAC concept to improve Payment Integrity.

MITRE recognizes the impact that the overall federal Payment Integrity situation has on government effectiveness and public confidence. Given the public interest nature of this challenge, in 2015, MITRE conducted an independent study to assess the underlying systemic factors that enable fraud and other improper payments and to explore innovative government-wide solutions to improve Payment Integrity. Two key related strategic recommendations in that study were (1) to explore PPPs to cost-effectively bring to bear needed information technology resources, data sets and skillsets otherwise unavailable; and (2) to establish a PIRAC—a shared, cross-government research and data analytics capability to be used to improve the prevention and detection of fraud and other improper payments.