CAG focuses on Al to uncover fake claims, conduct performance audits

From identifying non-existent schools claiming scholarship benefits to detecting similar images used by multiple beneficiaries of government schemes, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is using Artificial Intelligence (Al) and Machine Learning (ML) in a big way.

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The CAG has showcased at least half-a-dozen such case studies showing use of these tools in a 'Compendium on Responsible Artificial Intelligence', unveiled at the SAI20 Engagement Group Summit held under India's G20 Presidency at Panaji recently.

One of these case studies is about the use of Al in detecting duplicate, fake and ineligible beneficiaries of Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA), the government's digital literacy programme. As per the scheme's guidelines, the beneficiaries trained under the programme were required to upload their photographs.

To see whether same images or different images of the same beneficiaries, or non-human images, were used for claiming the training cost, the centre for data management & analytics at CAG, which does research and analysis for phase-1 data-driven audits, developed an intelligent model using open-source platform Python - to automatically analyse these images. With the help of this model, the large volume of images was analysed automatically, which was not possible manually.