WIREDGOV

Adult social care takes the lion’s share of a local authority’s budget at around 39 pence in the pound 2023 - 24. This is a figure which is set to grow, with the Budget at the end of October promising increases to the national living wage and national insurance contributions.

Unfortunately, this comes at a time when local authorities are facing very challenging times as continued funding shortfalls place significant pressure on budgets. According to the Bennett Institute for Public Policy the majority of English councils are on the verge of financial collapse with local authorities facing a £9.3 billion deficit by 2026-7.

This means the focus for all local authorities has to be on driving efficiencies. 

Obtain clean contact data from applicants

The best place to start in efficiency saving is when checking the eligibility for those applying for adult social care. This requires the collection of accurate contact data from applicants in the first instance. When contact information such as name, address, email and phone number are accurate the verification process becomes more reliable. Only then can ID verification technology confidently cross-reference the provided information against official databases or other authoritative sources without discrepancies that could lead to false positives or negatives.

This is vital to avoid “misplaced” spend on adult social care that should be funded by another organisation, and in stopping possible fraud. By maintaining clean and accurate contact data ID verification systems can more successfully recognise suspicious activity and prevent fraudulent claims.

Address verification

To obtain clean contact data it’s important to begin with address verification, which ensures the collection of consistently accurate, standardised addresses. This is vital when around six million people in England and Wales move home every year.

This approach is usually recognised as the foundation of contact data quality, because once you have access to an up-to-date address it makes it much easier to match and verify identities across numerous sources.

Autocomplete or lookup technology

An ideal way to source accurate user addresses and other contact data is to have access to autocomplete or lookup technology. With address autocomplete tools it’s possible to deliver an appropriately formatted, correct address at the onboarding stage, when the user starts to input theirs. These services are worthwhile because around 20 per cent of addresses entered online contain errors; these include spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, and incorrect postcodes, as well as incorrect email addresses and phone numbers, largely due to errors when inputting contact information. An additional benefit of the service is the number of keystrokes required when entering an address is cut by up to 81 per cent. This speeds up the onboarding process and improves the whole experience.

It's important to bear in mind that similar technology can be employed to deliver first point of contact verification across email and phone, so these vital contact datasets can also be verified in real-time.

Data cleaning platform

Another option is a scalable data cleaning software-as-a-service (SaaS) that can be simply accessed, and doesn’t require coding, integration or training to use, to deliver address and wider data quality in real-time across existing user databases. It can cleanse and correct contact data and match records, preventing duplication. A single, intuitive interface offers the opportunity for data standardisation, validation, and enrichment, ensuring high-quality contact information across many databases. It can deliver clean data as it’s being collected and held data in batch. As well as SaaS, such service capabilities can additionally be accessed via cloud-based API (application programming interface), Microsoft SQL Server or deployed on-premise.

Electronic ID verification technology

Data hygiene technologies on their own aren’t enough to prevent possible ‘misplaced’ spending and fraud. The answer is to use an electronic identity verification (eIDV) platform to make sure the claimants are who they state. An automated tool such as this can be accessed via delivery mechanisms, including an “out-of-the-box” user interface with no integration required; or cloud API; and scaled up or down according to the needs of the users.

Being “always on” these platforms are able to cross-check, in real-time, the names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers provided by applicants during remote onboarding. This avoids a negative impact on the user experience, while preventing fraud.

Obtaining an eIDV tool with access to billions of consumer and business records from reputable sources around the world, including government, utility and credit agencies, is preferable for the best outcome.

When compared with manual checks employing such automated technology is significantly quicker, more accurate and cost effective for undertaking ID verification and preventing fraud. There’s no extra staffing or training costs, and there’s much less danger of human error when using this technology. Instead, those eligible for care are onboarded swiftly, ensuring they receive what they need quickly.

With a focus by local authorities on balancing the books stopping any “misplaced” spending and avoiding fraud in the delivery of costly adult social care is critical in these challenging times. The answer is to have technology in place to ensure they are collecting clean contact data on citizens and delivering the necessary electronic ID verification checks.

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