Never again. That was the resounding message delivered via the robodebt royal commission from the thousands of Australians whose lives and livelihoods were upended by the cruellest experiment in bureaucratic automation the country has ever seen.

Now, with plans under way to automate the calculation of individual NDIS support plans, it appears we’ve reached new heights of institutional amnesia. Once again, vital lifelines to support will be placed at the mercy of automated systems. Only this time, the mechanisms for review and redress will be vanishingly thin.

In plans revealed by Guardian Australia this week, the National Disability Insurance Agency has set its sights on reforming the way individual disability support budgets are determined, reducing the scope for human discretion and giving data and algorithms a greater role.

Currently, a person’s support budget is determined through a combination of computer-based tools and human discretion. These tools help generate an initial........

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