To take the NDIS to the next level will require cultural and operational changes that give the National Disability Insurance Agency the tools, and the mindset, to properly manage its business.

The NDIS is an outstanding Australian initiative. Based on the principle of ‘reasonable and necessary supports’, it funds services to 760,000 people with severe disability. Over the last twelve years the NDIA has moved the NDIS from a concept to a fully implemented scheme deployed Australia-wide. Annual costs now are of the order of $50 billion and growing at a rate of around 10 per cent a year.

There are approximately 320,000 NDIS service providers of whom about 20,000 are ‘registered’.  The rest are not, which can mean that little is known about them. While there are a few large providers, the vast majority (300,000 or more) are small or medium-small providers with an average of two clients each. Most of these are bona fide organisations that provide quality services, although Minister Butler, and Minister Shorten before him, have expressed concern over the growing number of fraudulent providers extracting funds from the scheme without delivering service or value.

In his recent address to the National Press Club, Minister Butler outlined plans to cut the number of participants by 160,000 to reduce cost growth. I agree with him on the need to control costs but beg to differ on the approach. The NDIA is still evolving. While it has rolled out the NDIS, it is not in sufficient control of the scheme to control costs, nor to substantially reduce fraud, nor to protect participants from privacy loss or abuse. This is not a criticism of the NDIA. It is a list of challenges to be addressed in the next steps of the organisation’s development.

From my........

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