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- Participants, providers and governments don’t have the information they need
- Current NDIS digital systems make it difficult for many participants to make informed purchasing decisions when managing their funding
- Current NDIS processes and systems could better enable market stewardship, monitoring and protect the scheme from non‑compliance, sharp practice and fraud
- The Panel’s vision: Investment is needed in the digital and data infrastructure of the NDIS
- Easier for providers to set up to deliver supports
- Easier for participants and providers to connect with each other
- Easier for participants to pay providers and manage their budgets
- Recommendation 10: Invest in digital infrastructure for the NDIS to enable accessible, timely and reliable information and streamlined processes that strengthen NDIS market functioning and scheme integrity
Participants, providers and governments don’t have the information they need
We’ve heard from participants that NDIS markets are not yet working as intended. Current information on what supports can be purchased, what supports are available, and the prices and quality of supports is often hard to find or understand. This affects their ability to exercise informed choice and control over their supports.
Understanding complex information across different sources requires significant time and effort from participants, their families, carers, and their intermediaries (such as Support Coordinators and Plan Managers). Working out how NDIS funding can be used is too confusing and complicated.
It takes a lot of time and effort for participants to find providers.
The current NDIS Provider Finder tool only provides basic information on available, registered providers in a participant’s local area. However, this information can be unreliable and is often not enough for participants to find and choose suitable service providers. Many participants and their decision-supporters rely on word-of-mouth information and advice from other participants, especially people they know and trust, or help from an intermediary (such as a Local Area Coordinator or Support Coordinator) with varying outcomes.
Providers also lack sufficiently detailed, accurate or timely information on what supports and services participants need and where.
This means there are very significant information gaps which undermine the effectiveness of NDIS markets.
Back to topCurrent NDIS digital systems make it difficult for many participants to make informed purchasing decisions when managing their funding
While the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has made efforts to improve its processes and systems, managing and monitoring spending is still challenging and administratively burdensome for many participants. Paying providers can take a lot of work, and can be slow. Tracking how much funding participants have and in what budgets, as well as how much funding has been used, can be difficult.
More than half of all participants are choosing to use a Plan Manager where they get more choice over providers (compared to agency-management) and it can be administratively easier (compared to self-management).
However, there is significant confusion about who should be doing what in helping participants to understand, use and manage funding. As at 30 June 2023, over 65 per cent of all active participants have access to two or more intermediaries, with over half of these participants having funding for support coordination and plan management.
Back to topCurrent NDIS processes and systems could better enable market stewardship, monitoring and protect the scheme from non‑compliance, sharp practice and fraud
Current NDIS processes and systems don’t provide governments with sufficient information to protect the integrity of the scheme and allow governments to monitor and steward the market.
Governments can only see part of the market based on NDIA and plan managed transactions. Data about whether supports meet participants’ needs and are effective in delivering outcomes is not collected in a coordinated way, to know how the market is working and what support approaches work best. Incomplete data and limited market visibility also make it difficult to understand the nature and scale of non-compliance, sharp practice and fraud occurring across the scheme.
Without sufficient market visibility, it is difficult for governments to send timely and appropriate market signals to service providers about potential opportunities and supply gaps in the market, or protect scheme integrity.
Recommendation 10: Invest in digital infrastructure for the NDIS to enable accessible, timely and reliable information and streamlined processes that strengthen NDIS market functioning and scheme integrity
* Legislative change required
- Action 10.1: The Australian Government should develop and fund an easy-to-use centralised online platform that provides information on all locally available supports and services for participants and Navigators. An online registry should provide participants and Navigators with essential, accessible, timely and reliable information to search for providers by location and service type. This should cover all available, local NDIS providers, including registered and enrolled providers (see Action 17.1). Information on how much supports cost and provider performance (see Action 12.3) should be centralised to make it easier for participants and Navigators to compare providers based on price, safety and quality of their service. The centralised online platform should also include information about available foundational supports (see Actions 1.3 and 1.4).
- Action 10.2: The National Disability Insurance Agency and the new National Disability Supports Quality and Safeguards Commission should enable better two-way information sharing with third party online platforms to encourage digital innovation that builds on the centralised online platform. The National Disability Insurance Agency’s current application programming interface (API) functionality should be expanded to enable better two-way information sharing. This should build on what is offered by the centralised online platform (see Action 10.1) and provide participants with a more tailored digital experience. Information sharing arrangements should comply with relevant privacy, information handling and data security requirements.
Information sharing arrangements could also be designed to enable third party online platforms to help connect participants with service providers to share information collected on participants’ experiences with providers, and governments to share consistent, reliable provider information across platforms. This could improve governments’ market monitoring capability and enable more timely response to quality and safety concerns. - Action 10.3: The National Disability Insurance Agency should transition to fully electronic payments and improve visibility of NDIS payments. This should give governments the information required to be effective market stewards, understand what works and deliver outcomes, and strengthen scheme integrity. Investments should be made in a multi-channel digital payments approach, including near real-time claims and payment technologies. 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 to better monitor spending (see Action 3.6). Participants should be able to continue to pay upfront and seek reimbursements in the short term, but reimbursements should be phased out over time.
- Action 10.4: The Australian Government should invest in the underpinning digital infrastructure and capability needed to protect the integrity of the NDIS. 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. Where possible, existing fit-for-purpose government technologies, such as myGov, should be used or built upon. Investments should align with the Australian Government’s future Data and Digital Government Strategy, and form part of a holistic approach in protecting the integrity of the scheme and the broader NDIS digital transformation strategy and roadmap (see Action 10.6).
- Action 10.5*: The Australian Government should develop and implement a clear transition path for existing Plan Managers. The future electronic payment system (see Action 10.3) would enable participants to pay all registered and enrolled providers. A strategy to steward the plan management market should be developed in transitioning to fully electronic payments. Work to clarify Plan Managers’ current responsibility in protecting scheme integrity should start now and should be refined as the NDIS digital infrastructure and capability evolves (see Action 10.4). Where needed, support for participants to monitor and manage their funding should transition to Navigators (see Recommendation 4).
- Action 10.6: The Australian Government should design and roll out an NDIS digital transformation 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. The strategy and roadmap should link with and leverage digital transformation efforts across the Australian 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.