SAS is offering software aimed at helping federal, state, and local governments detect fraudulent behavior within their programs.

The SAS Fraud Framework is based on the business analytics company's Social Network Analysis tool, which can identify links between people participating in government programs and those engaged in fraud, according to a statement.

The software uses these links to expose information about suspicious activity so agencies can investigate and build a case against people who may be committing fraud, according to SAS.

SAS Fraud Framework works by scoring data and creating alerts for transactions that have the highest probability of fraud. It also reduces the amount of false positives and negatives in the reported data, according to SAS.

The vendor said that some government agencies already are successfully using the software. For instance, Washington State's Department of Labor and Industries has deployed the framework to identify employers who evade workers' compensation taxes.

Fifteen departments in the U.S. federal government also use other SAS software to analyze areas such as business performance, budgeting, logistics, cyberdefense, and threat assessment, the vendor said.

The Office of Management and Budget reported that the federal government lost more than $98 billion last year to improper payments, making detection software a useful tool for government agencies, experts said.

"By identifying noncompliant employers, we estimate a savings of $6 [million] to $8 million in recovered premiums in the first year," Doric Olson, Washington Department of Labor and Industries fraud detection manager, said in a statement.

Indeed, a survey by research firm INPUT called "Federal Investment in Anti-Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Solutions, 2010-2015" listed Medicare, Medicaid, health and human services, tax and revenue, and contracting as government services that could benefit from analytics and business intelligence software.