One of the ideas promoted by the new Con Dem government is that all public sector bodies publish invoices for spending of more than £500. I think they probably got this idea from the crowdsourcing audits that papers like the Guardian did on MPs' expenses.
Some local authorities have stated to do this, and I understand it is beginning to cause problems with attempted fraud. The reason is that all sorts of information is posted _ like invoice numbers, internal references, VAT registration and so on _ that make someone sound very convincing when they phone up and say they are a contractor who has not been paid. Of course, someone can be employed to redact a lot of this kind of stuff, but that is immensely time consuming.
Whatever the solutions found, it sounds as if the new scheme is leading to an increase in red tape, and possibly fraud. Let us hope that some of this "citizens' auditing" delivers saving to compensate.
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