NDIS Lacks Data Transparency
22 October 2018 at 5:17 pm
The National Disability Insurance Scheme needs to release more market data so providers can offer services where help is needed most, a new report says.
The Centre for Social Impact’s latest research examined the NDIS’s need for market stewardship – which are efforts to address gaps in the availability of disability services due to a person’s location or specific needs.
The report said without clear strategies in place, the National Disability Insurance Agency would not be equipped to detect gaps until it was too late, putting the autonomy promised to people with disability under the NDIS at risk.
CSI research director, associate professor Gemma Carey, told Pro Bono News it was vital the NDIA released more market data to disability providers.
“The lack of data transparency is a huge problem,” Carey said.
“One of the best things you can do to prevent against market failure is to have transparency around supply and demand information, because that enables providers to enter new markets and know where there might be potential areas of growth in new services.”
The report said the NDIA also needed greater resources for market stewardship and a removal of the agency’s staffing cap.
Carey said the NDIA was an agency under extreme pressure, especially given it was dealing with not just one national NDIS market, but a multitude of local markets.
“To be a good market steward and to have good information about these local markets, the NDIA needs to dedicate more staff towards this,” she said.
“If this doesn’t happen, we jeopardise the entire vision of the scheme. Because without robust markets, we have no choice or control and that’s at the heart of what was the NDIS was brought in for.”
CSI’s research comes on the back of a recent parliamentary committee report which said the NDIA has failed to steward a disability support marketplace to meet demand.
The committee also criticised of the lack of national strategy to grow the workforce, despite the need for an additional 70,000 disability workers by 2020.
“There are virtually no incentives to choose a career in the disability support sector… [which] is experiencing a rise in underemployment and insecure work arrangements,” the committee report said.
