The National Disability Insurance Agency has revealed it will adopt an integrated cloud platform to deliver additional business capabilities for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Services Australia, which provides the NDIS IT system on behalf of the NDIA, last week approached the market for the platform that will be used to support both external and internal users.
The cloud platform is intended to augment the SAP CRM solution – one of the main IT platforms behind the operations of the NDIS.
The solution is currently used as both “system of record for all participant information”, as well as by registered service providers to “make claims for services or products provided to participants”.
But with the scheme now supporting more than 300,000 participants, the CRM is not suited to supporting non-core business capabilities, which the NDIA said will only increase over time.
“As the NDIA has matured, we have increasingly found the need to provide additional business capability in the areas of case management, event management and campaign management,” tender documents state.
“The current DHS hosted SAP CRM platform has limited support for these “non-core” business capabilities and the decision has been taken to procure a Cloud Platform specifically for this purpose.”
Services Australia also envisages that the cloud platform will integrate with SAP CRM solution at a later date to allow “information to be shared between the two solutions”, though this falls out of the procurement.
The agency said the cloud platform, which is expected to be present on the government’s certified cloud services list, will need to support up to 555,000 users over the next three years.
This includes up to 550,000 regular and infrequent external users and up to 5000 internal users – considered employees, contractors or contracted service providers.
The NDIA also has a “strong preference” to work with the original vendor for the proposed cloud platform”.
Services Australia is planning to shortlisting vendors in late January 2020 before awarding a contract in March.
The procurement comes just under a year since a parliamentary inquiry found the failure to design IT systems around the needs of users was contributing to administrative burden.
“Having robust and fit-for-purpose ICT systems can greatly assist the NDIA in meeting its operational targets and delivering quality outcomes for participants,” the report stated.
Last month, NDIS Minister Stuart Robert revealed the long-awaited digital marketplace of service providers – or digital market services, as it is now referred to – will be available from early 2020.
