The federal government is trying to root out waste, fraud and abuse.

On Friday, the Obama administration issued a memo about its commitment to identifying and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse across all levels of government.

He announced several initiatives that the White House hopes will bring a new sense of responsibility for taxpayer dollars by eliminating what doesn’t work, cracking down on waste, and making government more open and responsive to the American people.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag was also there and demonstrated a new tool that’s currently being used at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

“Traditionally, if we were going to look at a potential contractor to obtain a contract with the federal government, the kinds of things that would be examined are whether the contractor had a valid street address, whether there was any outstanding federal debt and what have you. . . . What the new tools allow us to do is to build in a much richer set of relationships that can be correlated with potential fraudulent activity.”

He said the tool goes into much greater detail about the relationship between sub-contractors and prime contractors, for example, and can also reveal more information about management officials.

He noted, too, that the tool gathers data in real time, which allows the federal government to trace where each dollar is headed at any given moment.

Read more of Orszag’s blog: Do Not Pay? Do Read This Post

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