The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is in need of a cohesive digital transformation strategy and roadmap, and better online services underpinned by IT upgrades.
A long-anticipated report into the scheme makes a series of findings as to the current-state of digital systems and infrastructure and suggests a number of additional investments will need to be made.
In particular, the report calls for a strategy and roadmap "to bring together and sequence all initiatives in the NDIS digital landscape."
"This should guide improvements to the NDIS digital landscape, support a more risk-proportionate regulation of providers, and enable a seamless user experience for participants, providers and workers," it states.
The strategy should also explicitly be aligned to broader digital transformation efforts across the federal government.
"This should ensure investments in the NDIS digital landscape support interoperability and data sharing with other Australian government systems (such as, aged care and veterans’ care) to minimise the burden placed on participants, workers and providers," the report states.
Specific investments in IT systems and capability "to protect the integrity" of the scheme.
"Investments in information technology, capacity and capability should be made to improve prevention, detection and responses to non-compliance, sharp practices and fraud in the scheme," it states.
The report states that it may be possible to re-use "existing fit-for-purpose government technologies, such as myGov", either as-is or as the basis for some functional aspects of this work.
Another recommended major investment is to move the scheme to electronic-only payments.
"Investments should be made in a multi-channel digital payments approach, including near real-time claims and payment technologies," the report recommends.
"The design of a multi-channel digital payments approach should make it easier and faster for participants to pay for supports, improve information captured on all NDIS payments, and enable participants and Navigators [client support personnel] to better monitor spending."
Centralised support services register
Another key investment is in a register that allows all parties to more easily connect participants with NDIS providers.
The report [pdf] found that “the current NDIS Provider Finder tool only provides basic information on available, registered providers in a participant’s local area.”
Subsequently, participants or their families or intermediary support staff often have to scan “complex information across different sources” to “find and choose suitable service providers.”
A new “easy-to-use centralised online platform” would provide enough information to “compare providers based on price, safety and quality of their service.”
It would also index non-NDIS support services that could help people on the scheme, including other Commonwealth services, or state or local government services.
“More inclusive and accessible mainstream and community services will not only produce better outcomes for people with disability but can also reduce the need for more specialist supports over time," it states.
The platform would also integrate with third-party registers that are used by NDIS providers to find participants and collect information about their needs.
The centralised platform’s application programming interfaces would “streamline the process” for participants and NDIS providers “signing up to use other platforms.”
This would help resolve blindspots in data available to NDIS providers needed to better tailor their services to NDIS users' situations and specific requirements.
