NDIS project under-resourced, underprepared

An independent review into the deployment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s MyPlace participant and provider portals has found major flaws in the implementation process.

The review, conducted by PwC, found that a series of compounding issues were to blame for the failure of the system to provide payments on time to many disability service providers.

It found that the implementation ran out of time to complete the required activities, which resulted in insufficient stakeholder engagement, training and preparedness. Necessary trading materials were not finalised by the 29 June project completion date.

The overall program was “under-resourced and underprepared” to deal with the IT implementation challenges that arose, PwC said.

While the NDIA was able to effectively manage some of the risks leading up to the implementation, the agency was found to be less effective at managing the inherent risks of complexity, maturity and scale.

“The complexity of the stakeholder landscape, the amount of change leading up to and after the Full Scheme Launch, the low quality and timeliness of data, and the newness of the process all combined to create a critical risk that payments would fail,” the report states.

PwC has provided a series of recommendations, including implementing an end-to-end service delivery operating model as well as a single, integrated plan. Payments and service recovery should also be monitored against agreed performance metrics.

Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services Jenny Macklin said the government failed to adequately resource the NDIA to meet the demands of the rollout.

“As a direct result of the Turnbull government’s bungling, the NDIS rollout is now behind schedule. Sadly it’s people with disability, their families and disability service providers who will have to deal with the fallout,” she said.

“These problem must be fixed urgently. [Minister for Social Services] Christian Porter must start taking responsibility for the problems with the rollout of the NDIS.”

Image courtesy of Howard Lake under CC