News

During 2023, the NDIS Commission has continued its journey from a newly formed entity five years ago gradually establishing operations across Australia to a nationally focused regulator refining its purpose, cultural identity, and regulatory posture.

All of our efforts continue to be focused on supporting participants to access quality and safe services. This year we have strengthened and expanded our activities, with participants and their experience at the centre of our work.

In 2023 we have:

1. Implemented our new Regulatory Approach that has put us on track to another record-breaking year of compliance activity, following a ten-fold increase in compliance actions in the 2022-2023 financial year, including a 50% increase in banning orders. 
2. Received a budget uplift of $146.2 million to grow our workforce to 850 this year. We’ve already seen more than 350 people offered roles with the Commission since 1 July 2023.
3. Conducted three external facing reviews known as Own Motion Inquiries: Supported Accommodation and Platform Providers and Support Coordination and Plan Managers.
4. Implemented a new operating model including a major restructure of the Regulatory Operations Division.
5. Conducted several functional reviews to optimise our own operating practices and procedures across reportable incidents, registration, worker screening and practice quality.
6. Commenced implementation of a Regulatory Capability Program delivering a Regulatory Capability Framework and a Regulatory Practice Maturity Survey. Work is also underway to build the Regulatory Officers Learning and Development Program with 200 staff enrolled in The Professional Regulators course.
7. Released and are delivering against our Digital and Data Roadmap and Workforce Plan. This includes the upgrade of our phone and IT systems to enable us to respond to the increased volume of complaints we are receiving, within shorter timeframes. These systems will remove the barriers and frustrations people have experienced when trying to contact the NDIS Commission.
8. Reorganised our complaints function, resulting in us completing 91% more complaints compared to the same 6 month period in 2022.
9. Launched a national compliance campaign focusing on providers registered to provide specialist disability accommodation.
10. Launched new Compliance Priorities for 2023/24 including an overt focus on unregistered providers and unauthorised restrictive practices.
11. Implemented a new approach to reducing and eliminating the use of restrictive practices resulting in positive impact for participants, including:
    • increase in the number of behaviour support plans containing the decrease in use of restrictive practices over time
    • specialist support coordinators paying close attention to unauthorised restrictive practices and the implementation of behaviour support plans
    • providers paying closer attention to the implementation of behaviour support plans
    • providers taking greater care in assessing the need for any increased use of restrictive practices on participants, ensuring there is evidence to support any increases
    • providers taking more proactive steps in relation to unauthorised restrictive practices
    • greater scrutiny of use of restrictive practices by state authorisation panels resulting in a lower number of restrictive practices being authorised where there is insufficient evidence to support use
    • use of restrictive practices are now a focus of discussions during multidisciplinary team meetings led by support coordinators.
12. Conducted Regulatory Burden workshops from which we created our insights report.
13. Cracked down on fraudulent providers and unfair pricing in cross government collaboration through the Fraud Fusion and Price Taskforces.
14. Established a Consultative Committee whose majority membership is NDIS participants and consulted widely on the establishment of Experts by Experience.
15. Continued building sector capacity through our various grant programs and capability lifting initiatives including the Workforce capability framework, practice alerts, master classes and worker orientation modules. As of 1 November 2023, approximately 972,448 people have completed the worker orientation module.
16. Collectively, we have consulted with more than 2000 participants and their supporters to guide our work on developing practice standards, understanding what a meaningful life looks like and feels like to them and on how we can better support participants to uphold their human rights and their consumer rights.
17. Stood-up a suite of specialist teams to better support participants including:
    • Safeguarding Team which has undertaken almost 1500 individual safeguarding actions within 2 days of notification since 5 December 2022
    • National intake and triage team which has received almost 20,000 complaints to date and more than 70,000 reportable incidents
    • Fraud Fusion Taskforce Team contributing to and utilising increased high value intelligence to treat risks in the market for participants and this year has executed over 50 compliance and enforcement actions
    • In-house litigation team to expand our ability to seek civil penalties and injunctions
    • Business Improvement and Quality Team to provide robust governance and reporting of high investment business improvement initiatives led by regulatory operations and to support quality improvements in leadership, management and regulatory capability
    • Indigenous and remote operations team to provide strategy and advice on engagement and regulatory practice in a culturally sensitive way
    • High intensity responses that address urgent risks to participant rights and critical sector issues
    • Targeted campaigns which avert potential risks to participants and address emerging sector issues and during 2023 have been delivered in several place-based campaigns including Bunbury, Launceston, Maningrida and Townsville
    • Serious Non-Compliance Team to focus on matters that involve systemic issues across multiple locations, providers or jurisdictions
    • Price help team to assist participants to navigate unfair practices with associated information guides
    • Risk, Intelligence and Delivery Team to support implementation of contemporary intelligence led risk-based approaches
    • Operational Assessment Team to provide a review and assurance function over high risk matters.

Our activities in 2023 demonstrate our continuing commitment to put participants at the centre of everything we do.