PIAF-IT is the European project co-financed by the European Commission-OLAF, with resources from the direct funds of the "Hercule III" Programme, aimed at the realisation of a "Business Intelligence" instrument, called "Integrated Anti-Fraud Platform" (PIAF), achieved in partnership by the national Committee for combating fraud against the European Union (Italian AFCOS) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (General Inspectorate for Informatics and Technological Innovation of the General State Accounting Office).

The PIAF-IT project fully responds to specific European regulatory forecasts and to multiple sectoral recommendations of the European Commission, aimed at underlining the need to "design and concentrate audit and control activities on the basis of risk analysis and the development of IT tools" capable of exploiting the enormous amount of data in the availability of national and local authorities.

In detail, the project, which involves a national partnership (Ministry of Justice and Court of Auditors) and a foreign partnership (Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia), will aggregate data from national and European databases with the aim of making available to all national administrations managing EU funds a technological tool that can be an effective reference point both in the pre-certification phase of expenditure (preventive function) and in that relating to ex-post controls.

The strategic objective of the Platform is to allow data from different and heterogeneous sources to be collected in a telematic, structured and secure manner and organised in an integrated and harmonised way so as to allow the user an immediate subjective classification and a timely perception of the phenomenon in question and to provide the necessary decision support to the competent authorities to implement, at the most, the phase of prevention and fight against irregularities and fraud against EU funds.

The constant direct dialogue with the institutions and bodies involved in the various strategic, architectural and technological phases of the project plan (European Commission-OLAF, Ministry of Justice, Court of Auditors and Chamber of Commerce) ensured the full sharing of the technical aspects of the related services of the future platform and the deepening of the contents and methods of operation of the different databases for integration into PIAF, aimed at:

• contribute to the definition of a model of interoperability between the PIAF-IT system and the "Business Register" of Info-Camere;
• activate the procedures for consulting the Information System of the Judicial Box of the Ministry of Justice (concerning convictions for specific offences of fraud against the national and European budget) and the system for monitoring irregularities and fraud on the Community funds of the Court of Auditors (collection of information on judgments issued by administrative justice in the event of "tax damage" on a beneficiary of public funding and monitoring of recoveries);
• ensure the full effectiveness of the Platform, also having regard to the long-standing problem of the so-called "double funding", by acquiring the information from the database "Irregularities Management System – IMS" which is headed by the European Anti-Fraud Office – OLAF (where information on irregularities and fraud affecting the Union budget found by the anti-fraud services of each Member State) and the databases related to the "direct management" funding used by the competent Directorates-General of the European Commission on the basis of the various grant programmes are included;
• carry out (assuming) a feasibility study on the complementarity between the PIAF-IT platform and the ARACHNE IT system managed by the European Commission. 

The implementation of the PIAF-IT project will also facilitate information exchange and increase the competences of all national and European actors interested in the protection of the Union budget in the management of EU funds, ensuring that common interests can be shared and combined for the creation of a mutual cooperation relationship.