The NAO highlighted that the Department’s teams lack awareness of each other’s criteria and thresholds for pursuing or prioritising cases.67 We questioned the Department whether this, combined with its structure, would make it challenging for it to decide the most appropriate route to investigate potential fraud, and whether it may be leaving gaps malicious actors could exploit.68 The Department told us there are standard operating procedures that assess the information in a case, the type of allegation raised, whether it should follow a criminal route or whether more information is needed before allocation.69 The Department also said that cases not meeting the criminal threshold are still recorded as intelligence to identify patterns that may later support an investigation.70 But the NAO also found that there are no clear mechanisms for other parts of the MoD to continue looking at a case to see if non-criminal routes would be 63 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.4-1.5 and 4.3-4.6 64 C&AG’s Report, para 4.14 65 C&AG’s Report, paras 3.7-3.9 and 4.14 66 C&AG’s Report, para 4.3 67 C&AG’s Report, para 4.7 68 Qq 16 and 51 69 Q 51 70 Q 53 16 appropriate.71 The Department told us it intends to address this gap through its planned integrated investigative team, which would ensure that cases closed by police can be passed back to counter-fraud for further triage where appropriate.72 The Department acknowledged that it needs a robust mechanism to ensure this happens consistently.73