SEATTLE, Sep 23, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA), a major source of risk protection for America's farmers, has saved taxpayers over $180 million by beefing up proactive efforts against waste, fraud and abuse. RMA efforts include implementing advanced data mining through the use of a data warehouse from Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR).
The Federal Crop Insurance Program provides 600,000 farmers and ranchers in 3,000 counties with $33 billion in protection for 83 crops on nearly 78 percent of the nation's insurable acres. Seventeen private insurance companies sell and service the policies.
"Even a small percentage of producers, agents or adjusters abusing the system can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars wasted. More extensive monitoring of the program will help maintain its long-term viability as an affordable way to mitigate farm risk," said Bert Little, executive director of the Center for Agribusiness Excellence.
As the organization hired by the USDA to implement new technology for targeting compliance reviews and investigations, the Center for Agribusiness Excellence selected Teradata for its sophisticated data mining and statistical tools that quickly query over 800 million records spanning over 13 years. The project, a partnership between Planning Systems Inc. (PSI), Tarleton State University and Teradata, has resulted in the identification of suspected waste, fraud and abuse.
"Teradata(R) enables researchers to run thousands of scenarios and search data to reveal trends, relationships, behaviors and probabilities among hundreds of millions of records. Situations where there is a high probability of abuse can give investigators leads to review irregular findings and perform spot checks," said Mike Cross, director of Data Warehousing & Mining at PSI. "That's led to significant savings and serves as a major deterrent to prevent future abuse."
Based on the success of the data warehouse, Canada, Australia, Germany and other countries are using the USDA Federal Crop Insurance Program as a model and plan to study the center's research.
"Teradata has extensive experience in delivering solutions to government organizations to improve efficiency, reduce fraud and serve consumers better," said Allen Shay, president and COO, NCR Government Systems Corporation, Teradata Division. "We often hear about charges of potential overspending within government, but rarely about the government programs in place to protect the budget against abuse by individual citizens and corporations. This is a prime example of solid governmental oversight, and it's ensuring our tax dollars are used as promised."
About Teradata Division
Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), is the global leader in enterprise data warehousing and enterprise analytic technologies and services. For more information, visit www.teradata.com.
About NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR) is a leading global technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships with their customers. NCR's ATMs, retail systems, Teradata(R) data warehouses and IT services provide Relationship Technology(TM) solutions that maximize the value of customer interactions. Based in Dayton, Ohio, NCR (www.ncr.com) employs approximately 29,500 people worldwide.
NCR and Teradata are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries.
SOURCE: NCR Corporation
Teradata Division NCR Corporation Dian Terry, 937-445-2225 dian.terry@teradata-ncr.com
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