Enforcement investigations are seeking to establish evidence of “guilty mind” by the subject, compared to compliance investigations that are seeking to establish and adjudicate on the conduct of “guilt acts” by the subject. As ISB’s Enforcement investigations function continues to mature, maintaining the status quo poses significant challenges to workload, case management, intelligence gathering, security of information, and operational reporting. There is also a real risk that ISB may have a case thrown out of court or rejected by the Public Prosecution Services of Canada (PPSC) based on a loss of evidence that would normally be included in a proper enforcement case management system. ISB requires a system to support Enforcement investigations that will replace the system(s) currently in use, which is not meeting the needs of enforcement. The Enforcement function is in need of an effective case management system capable of supporting effective workload management, unified case management, the release of quality court documents, tracking of evidence and reporting. The Office of the Auditor General (OAG), in its 2017 spring report “Managing the Risk of Fraud”, noted the following “fraud in a federal government organization can cause the loss of public money or property, hurt employee morale, and undermine Canadians’ confidence in public services. Therefore, federal organizations must manage their fraud risks.”1 The lack of an effective case management system within ISB is limiting the ability of ISB to support robust investigations and achieve ESDC strategic objectives. • Enforcement function Currently, the Enforcement division utilizes a SharePoint site developed as a response to the critical shortcomings and abandonment of the Major Investigation and Sensitive Case Information System (MISCIS) as a case management system. MISCIS was an MS-Access database with limited functionality that did not meet business objectives. In addition, this solution had no workflow management and was not designed to be a case management system or a long-term solution to respond to current operational risks. An internal audit conducted by ISB in 2014 outlined the immediate need to develop and implement a robust and comprehensive case management system to manage the increase of enforcement investigations, aligned to key stages of the investigation workflow, and to help provide a framework for the separation of Enforcement and Compliance functions§. The report also highlighted the importance in consistency of evidence building in our processes. [2.3.1] Enforcement Function Cases handled by the ISB Enforcement NEID and regional investigators are maintained using a SharePoint system and Excel sheets to track cases. Enforcement investigations previously used MISCIS as a reporting tool to keep NHQ informed of the nature of a case, objectives, strategy, participants, partners, status and outcome of cases involving sensitivity and/or fraud characteristics MISCIS did not support day-to-day case processing. As a result, it was deemed impractical by investigators and was completely discounted as non-operational. Cases are managed at the regional level, without a common and robust case management system; current data on ongoing criminal investigations is unreliable, as the case management system (SharePoint) is not built into a robust process. SharePoint also does not meet the court-mandated investigation tracking, evidence tracking, documentation security and disclosure requirements for enforcement investigations. There is minimal system-level security around the criminal cases and investigators see each other’s files, and team leaders see files belonging to all of their investigators. SharePoint lacks any suitable change tracking mechanism for documents that may be modified by others than the author. There is also no suitable safeguards within SharePoint to prevent unauthorized disclosure of info. Once the objectives of transforming the enforcement function are met, this will increase the number of criminal cases initiated by each region, but as of yet no modern, secure, and reliable tool is available to help manage such an increase. The lack of an appropriate case management system puts into jeopardy all enforcement cases. ESDC provides significant public funding (more than $120 billion yearly) to millions of beneficiaries through the EI, CPP and OAS programs. To fulfill ESDC’s commitment to the proper stewardship of these funds, ISB is responsible for preventing, detecting and addressing potential abuse and fraud of these programs. To achieve this mandate, ISB currently performs the majority of its activities in the form of administrative investigations. As a result, the proportion of Enforcement function activities is much smaller than that of the compliance function. A 2016 global study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) indicates that all types of organizations around the world suffer significant losses due to fraud (estimated between 2.5 and 5% of an organization’s yearly revenue (excluding administrative errors). A scan of reports of fraud loss across major countries—including the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, among others—indicate that between 2.5 and 5% of benefits funds are lost to fraud. While some errors can be caught and fixed through administration functions, the function must be complemented with a strong enforcement regime that can address the complexities associated with a criminal fraud investigation and act as a strong deterrent. ISB has the opportunity to develop a cohesive, integrated, and enterprise-wide system to support the prevention, detection, and resolution of fraud investigations through the development of an enhanced Enforcement CMS, aligned to the Fraud Framework. To support the broader departmental modernization agenda, ISB must modernize itself to evolve with current and future technological and social changes. The Department’s employees are at the centre of this evolution. ISB will continue to invest heavily in staff development and training, enabling staff to change and grow with the environmental changes and to use new and existing skills to drive innovation in the Branch. ISB will also engage new employees with multidisciplinary knowledge and technical specialties to facilitate the horizontal collaboration and partnerships both within and outside of ESDC. This will be critical to its success in identifying new approaches to protect the integrity of its programs, services, people, and assets.