Following confirmation from federal authorities into a nationwide scam exploiting COVID-19 pandemic and insurance funds, the Commonwealth client engaged EY to perform a program integrity sprint to assess the existing state of fraud detection within the Commonwealth’s systems and a forensic review of approximately 150,000 fraudulent claims submitted by individuals and criminal enterprises with access to stolen personal information.
EY provided rapid response and covert collection of facts from interviews, document reviews and forensic analysis of claims data to provide perspectives and strategies for quantifying the volume and impact of losses due to potentially fraudulent claims. EY assessed the existing state of fraud detection within the Commonwealth’s systems resulting in an exponential increase in the identification of potentially fraudulent claims and new instances for “clawback” of improperly received benefits. EY provided surge resourcing and forensic data analytics support to identify exceptions and provided applications and appeals documentation utilizing EY’s Forensics robotic process automation capabilities and managed document review functionality.
Public Schools required a risk assessment and an internal audit plan to determine prioritization and what controls to implement.
EY developed an internal audit charter, identified Public Schools’ unique risk universe and formulated an internal audit plan that addressed key focus areas and outlined considerations for program development.
The Governor formed a Transportation Funding Task Force composed of public and private sector leaders to examine the Commonwealth’s transportation system and develop recommendations for a long-term transportation funding plan.
EY provided consulting, leadership and analysis evaluating historic trends, benchmarks and future revenue potential for a wide variety of revenue sources and developed a report outlining recommendations for funding statewide transportation needs into the future. The Task Force concluded with the Governor announcing a 10-year Transportation Investment Plan to immediately improve funding for transportation.
The Commonwealth is considering approaches to its next operations and maintenance contract and seeks innovation in the procurement and delivery of a modern, high-frequency regional rail service, covering nearly 150 stations and over 400 miles of track.
EY supported this effort by analyzing various commercial structures — drawing on both US and international precedents — to develop a strategy to deliver the current service and deliver long-term upgrades to decarbonize the fleet. We conducted market outreach to gather industry input and insight into the potential approaches and drive competition. EY developed financial and commercial sections of procurement documents and diligence materials, and provided financial, tax and accounting advice on potential structures enhancing the client’s procurement strategy and execution.
To mitigate compliance risks and prevent significant operational and reputational risk in this age of perpetual cyber attacks our Commonwealth client needed the essential component of any cybersecurity program, a 24-7 security operations center (SOC), which requires a clear organizational mission, staffing and technology platform setup/configuration.
EY delivered a turnkey solution to build and operate a high maturity SOC by providing a core team of trusted advisors, a security information and event management (SIEM)- focused SOC model, and industry-leading technology platform management. After six years of continuous service, the SOC is peer leading as judged by the federal government and has yielded strong governance, automation efficiency, unparalleled visibility and a significant reduction in cyber risk for the organization.
The Commonwealth needed to: 1) assess the financial health of its public two-year and four-year institutions; 2) recommend changes to the Commonwealth’s overall public higher education funding approach, and 3) support the Commission on Higher Education Quality and Affordability (established by Section 215 of the Massachusetts FY 2025 budget) by making recommendations on the level of funding and program design of state-funded financial aid. The ultimate goal of the Commonwealth in undertaking these initiatives was to increase student access to quality education and improve retention and graduation outcomes.
EY worked directly with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education and the Department of Higher Education and engaged hundreds of stakeholders across Massachusetts to gather, analyze and draw insights from higher education financial data, student financial aid data and student outcomes data. The analysis led to the creation of a common fact base and enabled a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities among the many stakeholders. The insights led to policy and program recommendations informed by data, generating support across the Commonwealth. Ultimately, the work resulted in strategic changes, adopted by legislature, to financial aid funding levels and revamping of financial aid program design.
The Commonwealth client required an independent review, quantitative analysis and modeling of programs, as well as the development of a customer-centric approach to their modernization efforts, with the goal of simplifying the process for case workers and making it easier for job seekers to develop the skills employers need. Additionally, the client lacked a clearly defined set of organizational core competencies, which limited its ability to operate efficiently and strategically manage talent.
EY is performing quantitative analysis and user research to develop recommendations and a roadmap to improve technology and processes, with the goal of getting more Massachusetts people into higher skilled and better paying jobs. EY is also conducting an organizational assessment to identify core competencies, areas where the client can streamline its operations, develop a talent strategy aligned with agency goals and provide an implementation roadmap to carry out recommendations.
The Commonwealth client is responsible for managing capital improvement projects at 232 local housing authorities through planning, design and construction. In 2016, the client began the process of modernizing its workflow for capital projects due to a change in how funding was allocated, which led to the volume of projects growing from a few dozen per year to more than 1,200 active at one time. The existing manual processes to see projects from conception to completion were labor intensive and often led to process-based roadblocks, delays and limited stakeholder visibility.
EY engaged with the client at the human level and provided process and technology consulting services to improve day-to-day business operations through a re-imagined construction management platform, developed and implemented an application enabling purely digital communications, introduced just-in-time notifications within the application portal as well as email notifications, and enabled digital signature capabilities resulting in increased efficiency as well as added transparency to overall workflows. EY’s work was crucial during the pandemic, enabling the client to pivot to remote work and its external teams of contractors and vendors to continue working.
Since 2018, EY has been a trusted tax advisor across many areas of tax including federal tax incentive services (i.e., geothermal energy implementation), tax compliance and employment tax to support University System employees and help address many challenges borne from the pandemic and the years to follow.
Employment tax services included considerations for managing the University System’s employees working remotely from jurisdictions outside the Commonwealth, as well as leveraging federal credits and incentives to maximize employment opportunities for University System. EY helped the University System determine in which jurisdictions nexus had been established and the steps necessary to mitigate employment reporting risk to promote successful outcomes for employees working remotely. Additionally, EY helped identify US federal tax credit opportunities as part of the pandemic stimulus programs, thus enabling the University System to maximize employment opportunities for Massachusetts residents and reducing unemployment burden for the Commonwealth.