15.15-16.30 Day 1 - Informed - NDIS
FIONA PAYNE:
Good afternoon and welcome to the final session of the first day of the NDIS New World conference
and congratulations on making it through to this late stage in the day. It's great to see so many of
you here to find out all things ICT related in the NDIA.
I thought we may have needed the Great Hall for this presentation given the interest it has
generated.
My name is Fiona Payne and it is my great privilege to be on the board of the NDIA and I am here
today to facilitate the session, introduce the speakers and ensure that we get the most out of them
in the question and answer session.
Please make sure your phones are turned to silent but please actively use them during the session to
tweet about what you are hearing about, what strikes you as interesting and any questions or
challenges you want to put out there.
Can I remind you that in the event of an emergency there are two different kinds of tweets or beeps
- follow our direction, I won't go through them all now, but one means we need to stop what we are
doing and listen and the other means we must exit at the back.
I think we are almost all here and seated. This session is part of the Informed series and the focus
today is on directions of the NDIA with regards to ICT.
Most of you will know that the Australian government has budgeted for $143 million to be invested
in the upgrade of the NDIA ICT system. In this session, the NDIA will outline their technology, vision
and strategy, provide an overview of the full scheme ICT solution, and identify opportunities for the
ICT industry to drive innovation or enhance outcomes for people with disability.
I will introduce both speakers together. Marie Johnson is in the Technology Innovation Division of
the agency. Marie is head of the NDIA Technology Authority and oversees the development of the
technology platform for the agency and for the NDIS which extends to the ways in which participants
and providers will interact on an E-Market. Marie has extensive senior experience in the public and
private sectors in Australia and internationally in both technology and innovation.
As the federal government agency’s CIO and chief technology architect, Marie have led major digital
and payment reform programs across key government sectors.
In 2006-7 Marie was named ‘Innovative CIO of the year Australia’ and in 2013, named one of
Australia's 100 women of influence. Marie is the managing director of the Centre for Digital
Business, a board director of Australian Information Industry Association, chair of the Digital Careers
National Steering Committee, a member of the New South Wales government ICT Advisory Panel
and a member of the New South Wales Accelerating Digital Government task force. What an
amazing profile!
Can I also introduce Charles McHardie. Charles is the Chief Technology Architect Officer for the
Department of Human Services, a slightly different title to that in the program.
Charles joined the Navy via the Royal Australian Naval College in 1985, graduating in 1987. He
undertook initial training on HMAS Parramatta and Stalwart before being awarded his bridge watch
keeping certificate in HMAS ships Tobruk and Hobart. He undertook deployments to Europe and
south-east Asia as an officer of the watch.
As executive officer of HMAS Sydney, he was deployed twice to the middle east in support of
operations enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He had two years at Maritime Headquarters as
Commander Plans, responsible for the operation of the fleet and exercise planning.
Charles’s was most recent role in defence was Director-General of the Australian Defence Simulation
and Training Centre in Canberra. He was responsible for development and management of defence
simulation governance, delivery of simulation services for joint and combined training with a specific
focus on major exercises and evolution and development of the Defence Synthetic Environment
including the design and production of innovative simulation and modelling assets.
He retired from the Navy in April this year to take up a position in the Australian public service at the
CIO Group with the Department of Human Services. In 2011, Charles was appointed as a member of
the Order of Australia, and AM, for services to naval warfare and a commendation for distinguished
service in 2014 for his command of combined task force 150.
He has a Master of Science in Information Technology from the University of New South Wales, a
master of Systems Engineering from the same university, and a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies
from Deakin University.
Charles joined the Department of Human Services in April 2015 and became the Chief Technology
Officer of the Strategy and Architecture division in September 2015.
Please join me in welcoming our speakers.
(Applause)
MARIE JOHNSON:
Good afternoon, it's a pleasure to be here together with Charles and Fiona. I want to acknowledge
the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and I would like to say that the timing of
this session is pretty impressive given the wonderful presentations we have heard earlier today,
which actually set the scene for what Charles and I will speak about today.
I won't do too much of a re-cap in terms of the purpose of the NDIS. The speech of Bruce Bonyhady
this morning was impressive. If you were not there in the session, go and read it. It should be
compulsory reading for everybody. Bruce's speech set the scene very well.
In opening up what I would like to be able to do is just to say this presentation today starts with the
participants. I will tell some participants’ stories because that is what grounds the strategy that we
will be speaking about today.
We heard this morning that the NDIS will fundamentally change the way in which services are
delivered and actually change and challenge the paradigm. We heard about adaptation this morning.
Adaptation is what we are speaking about.
Technology will be a driving factor that disrupts the current paradigm, not only for disability services
but, I believe, for service delivery across government.
We start out with a few stories to set the scene.
These are some quotes from some participants and I appreciate that many of you may know where
these come from. The first is about technology as a liberator - "Technology liberates me from the
constraints of my disability to live my life normally." That's a far reaching statement about this
person's life outcome.
There are further extensions to that story about what that means for people with disability
interacting with government services, and interacting more broadly.
When we talk about the overall strategy of the NDIA technology, we start from those statements–
those very strong and meaningful statements.
We have heard this morning about choice and control and innovation in the ecosystem. What
Charles and I will step through today is we are not only talking about the agency itself and putting
things in place to actually make the scheme scale over the coming years. We are talking beyond that.
Many of the things you have heard already today– stories around interfaces and standards and
things of that nature, which means that many services and devices can connect in a way that we
want to.
We aspire to a new digital experience. It is all about the human experience. Yes, it is about
technology and innovation, but it is more about the human experience.
This is a participant's story in the annual report. It is an important story, and think about what this
means for service delivery. This is a story about one of our participants, Janet, who has motor
neurone disease and difficulty communicating with those around her.
The NDIS provided Janet with a NeuroSwitch device, utilising the electrical signals sent by her brain
to her muscles to allow her to communicate through a computer. She can now send text messages
and communicate via Skype and send email and use the internet.
"I am free, I can communicate with everybody." Janet's husband went on to say that it is like she has
been released.
When we think about what it means for Janet, the challenge, which is an absolutely fundamental
challenge is, what does that mean for government service delivery, or delivering services in the
context of participants? When we think about Janet, her experiences interacting with the
environment around her, facilitated by the NeuroSwitch, and her life is lived through interfaces.
This is not about putting services on the government website served up in government speak. We
need to work with the participants in understanding their context and that is a very deep level of
engagement for the design of the services.
Having set that scene, built on this morning's session, I’d like to have a high level overview of the
NDIA ICT strategy because it frames the way in which the technology we are working with the
Department of Human Services on will deliver and grow the ecosystem.
As Fiona mentioned, earlier in the year the Australian government provided an appropriation for the
full scheme ICT system. And that had a number of different elements to it. Currently in trial phase,
the NDIS systems have been provided by the Department of Social Services, and that has been a
phenomenal achievement.
Earlier in the year the government directed that the Department of Human Services would take over
as the platform provider for NDIA and that appropriation provided for the continuation of NDIS
services through DSS, the Department of Social Services, through a transition, through to the
development and implementation of all the NDIA agency's systems capacity to be delivered by the
Department of Human Services.
Once we have considered what this means for reframing how we deliver services, engaging with
people with disability, the first element of that was the direction by government for services to be
provided by the Department of Human Services. It is the first real demonstration that we see of
government as a platform.
The direction to go with the Department of Human Services and not do things ourselves means that
the effort we will focus on is not on the operations of the system, but on the innovation that occurs
on the platform. That brings us to the second element of the strategy, which is about understanding
the end-to-end design, having a broad understanding of the end-to-end capability, which has the
participant at the centre.
There has been a lot of work done, across the three agencies and with people with disability, about
understanding that end-to-end design.
The third element of the strategy, which we have heard about this morning, is about driving
innovation through the ecosystem, to underpin market sustainability and community inclusion. If we
think about participants such as Janet, where her means of communication is through
interfaces, that is not a challenge for the NDIS alone to solve and it is certainly a global challenge. All
of this is sustainable only through the collaboration across the ecosystem on areas such as
technology, innovation and standards.
And so in looking at the various elements of this strategy, we have spoken about co-design and we
keep going back to the fundamental principles of co-design because that changes the paradigm.
When we think about Janet, referring to her as a representation of the participants across the board,
connection through interfaces and connection between the individual and the ecosystem, their
families and community.
Innovation–identifying emerging and new technologies. This morning we heard about technologies
that are already here, and part of the innovation is connecting that innovation that we already have
and utilising the capabilities that we already have. It is not always leading edge–leading edge is good,
but it is also good to connect with the current technology that we already have.
Through this putting in place of the new ICT systems and design of the end-to-end architecture
actually drives knowledge through data, big data analytics, to support the overall lifetime cost
estimate of the supports of a person with disability and driving the knowledge through the system.
The knowledge goes with the system.
And efficiency of course. Efficiency is not the new dirty word. It means that it is sustainable. To be
efficient, we have to absolutely understand the participant experience. Having done programs
across governments in other areas of the world, we know that if we don't pay enough attention to
the human experience, then it's not only a bad experience, but it's a very inefficient mechanism for
service delivery. People will call up, come in, and drive cost through the system. Understanding the
contextual experience is hand-in-hand with delivering a very efficient system as well.
The timeframes we are working to… I am not particularly troubled by aggressive timeframes because
I think that focuses the effort. And I think it is useful because it helps prioritise what gets done.
What we see is a timeframe which is illustrated over a number of different time horizons. Quite
clearly leading up to 1 July next year, we have a very significant body of work together with DHS in
transitioning from DSS and building and putting in place all the technology that is needed to run the
NDIA as an agency, as well as the channels through which participants and providers will interact.
That is the first phase for 1 July next year.
It would not be possible to move at that speed and with that agility, and we heard about that earlier
today, if not for the government direction to do government as a platform. So we reuse government
assets and government infrastructure and knowledge and strategic partnerships because the focus is
not just on those government systems, but on the innovation that will transform the way in which
services are delivered.
Beyond 1 July next year is two other time horizons where the operations of the NDIA scale up as the
scheme rolls out and beyond that as we put in place across the ecosystem new standards and
interfaces that will actually transform and grow and change the way in which services are delivered.
I am focusing a lot on standards in this discussion and some of the standards are not developed and
not yet known and I will talk about some of the discussions we have been having with some pretty
significant players globally as well.
If you think about how Janet interfaces through her switch through her computer, it is made possible
through different interfaces. When we understand that the cost of the scheme is $22 billion, and we
heard this morning that about $1 billion of that is assistive technology, it could be possible that that
$1 billion becomes higher - 2 or 3 billion - it becomes possible to have interfaces that augment
physical devices and personal services to transform the way services and supports are delivered.
That innovation comes with new standards which can only happen with collaboration from pretty
significant global institutions.
These standards are the layer from the government as a platform through the ecosystem. The
government is the platform itself which Charles will speak about. It is a common capability that in
fact can establish common processes across government. These global standards are quite
important and will provide providers with certainty as to how they will interface with their system
once the system is in place.
We know that the way in which payments are provided is innovating and even currently the Reserve
Bank is doing a lot of work in innovation in payments. We know that software developers will be
working on a whole range of different types of software where there can be machine-to-machine
communication made possible by standards. Also, standards bodies themselves. I will talk about
what is happening or what is about to happen in this space.
This is a big, busy slide and I will take a few minutes stepping through it so the concepts can settle.
Focusing on the middle part of the slide, we can see a construct called ‘government as a platform’
which I have spoken about. That is the NDIA utilising the core assets of the Department of Human
Services.
We have spoken a lot today about interfaces a lot today and the way they will be the mechanism by
which people with disability - and I will also say and probably everybody - will interface with
government services and beyond. And those interfaces, if you consider it, are not only about
websites or mobile apps but potentially gamifying content.
People with autism are some of our best gamers and they interact in that context. One of the
opportunities is to be able to render and deliver an experience that is a gamified experience,
potentially Second Life, potentially through avatars. It is not science fiction, but just a representation of existing capabilities and it is only up to our imagination as to how these different
technologies are brought together.
It happens through mechanisms that already exist. I have a Windows smartphone and I speak to
Cortana a lot, a virtual assistant, or there’s Siri with Apple. It would be interesting to speak to a
virtual assistant, even as a person with disability, and have that as the interface.
What does this mean for standards? What do Microsoft and Apple do in this space in terms of the
standards?
Recently, Charles and I visited the United States and the whole discussion about accessibility is way
more than disability which I know everybody here understands. The World Wide Web Consortium is
headed by Tim Berners-Lee who is focusing on the human-accessible web.
The first version of the internet was around connecting documents and I think that was phenomenal.
What Tim is speaking about is the standards that we need for interfaces to actually interface
different types of services into different parts of the human cognition. How does it happen? We
need it to happen for what we are talking about today and we will be collaborating with W3C and
Tim Berners-Lee's groups in terms of collaborating on the challenges we all face.
Because of the NDIS it brings together a focused purpose and we think that will be a very significant
contribution. Equally with Microsoft and IBM - Charles will speak more about this - having an
intelligence driven system is a game-changer.
We have spoken about government as a platform, interfaces, the way the system self-learns - makes
it more contextual and refined over time – will happen with cognitive intelligence driven by
capabilities such as IBM Watson.
Later you will hear in the last presentation, Mark Sagar who won the Academy Award for the movie
'Avatar' and collaborations with his institute in Auckland as a mechanism to really understand what
that interface is about.
On the other side of the slide we have research and industry because what the NDIA is attracting many spoke of it this morning - worldwide attention about social reform. Also, the way in which the
Australian government, through the Department of Human Services and NDIA, has been
approaching it from a technology perspective. Together with the DSS as a policy agency.
Conversations have been had with ANU, and the University of California at Berkeley. They all see the
economic challenges, the cost of the budget from disability and the ageing population. Converging
demographic trends are costing more to those governments than security and defence.
At the same time we have an amazing convergence of technology. Many of the solutions that you
would think normally for disability have got far broader application, and we heard about that today.
So we see in this opportunity, how do you gear the ecosystem? It is not serendipity, but must be
intentional with an understanding of commercial drivers for participants. Providers in the ecosystem
have to understand the technology strategy of big firms. The Australian Information Industry
Association has been partnering with this conference and has been trying to generate innovation in
the Australian ecosystem and this conference today is equally about innovation in the ecosystem.
I will pause now. Charles and I have an interactive presentation. I will be back later and Charles has
got some pretty interesting things to talk about.
CHARLES McHARDIE:
Thanks, Marie, I must admit I am excited to be part of this project. This is DHS's flagship project
across a large portfolio of projects we look after. On latest count, we have 209 projects, ICT builds,
that we have under way and out of all of those ICT builds, this is probably most important and
exciting.
Why? I think this will disrupt the way we deliver services to our citizens. The real beauty of the NDIS
project is that much of it is greenfield. Unlike many other projects where we are re-factoring
programs that we have under way, this one gives us a huge amount of opportunity for innovation.
That is what we are looking for in this project.
If you look at it in the purest sense, when you are trying to deliver services to disabled citizens
throughout digital channels, you are trying to pull people from the physical into the digital world.
And there are many challenges when you are not looking at disabled citizens, but it is compounded
when you have the disabled citizen trying to move into these digital channels, which makes it a real
avenue ripe for innovation.
I see it as a force multiplier. You heard I have a defence background. I see a lot of these innovative
technologies that we will see with assistive technologies as a real force multiplier for us across many
other programs we run in the Federal government. We will talk about that some more in a moment.
What are some of those technologies that we are talking about? Marie mentioned briefly virtual
assistants and artificial intelligence, expert systems. We have talked about these for many years.
When I undertook my masters in IT 12 years ago, it seemed that expert systems were going to be the
next best thing. We have talked about it and talked about it but we now seem to be on the cusp of
something different.
You look at Cortana and Siri and what IBM are doing with Watson, we do seem to be perfecting
virtual assistants now. What needs to progress in the near term, particularly in the disabled sector, is
to be able to put a nice, shiny front-end on that. We will talk about that as we move ahead.
Because we can't have a sad, boring interface sitting in the browsers. We need to focus on the APIs
that need to be built out by some of the large vendors like the Microsofts of the world, because
many people will be using their browsers to interact with things such as the NDIS E-Marketplace to
enable them to link into assistive technologies, whether they are new mouse technologies or voice
activated technologies, whether they are things like the Kinect system that we have with Xbox in the
gaming community.
We are starting up an Innovation Centre at DHS which should be ready to open early next year
where we aim to showcase some of those assistive technologies. We have been saying to a lot of the
vendors that we interact with, big and small, we would love to see the assistive technologies that
you think should be part of this disability ecosystem over the next 3-5 years, because we would love
to showcase them in our Innovation Centre.
Avatars. We have talked about virtual assistants, and many of you have probably interacted with
avatars if you play online games, if you play games on things like Xbox, if you play Halo, etc. For folks
like me with a military background who are used to dealing with avatars and simulators etc.… I think
this is an area we need to put a huge amount of effort into.
When Marie and I were in the US, talking to the large vendors, we asked them "Why are we not
seeing more and more avatars on the front end of virtual assistants?
And the answers were that they tried it in the banking sector and in the airline sector with bookings
and CRM systems in the back-end and they were saying they saw them as a bit of a novelty which
didn't show much value.
We think the disabled sector is an area that can really propel that forward. There are certain types of
disability where people will probably respond quite well to avatars. Indeed, as Marie mentioned,
Mark Sagar will be here tomorrow, showcasing things like Baby X, which has a high end avatar with a
bunch of intelligence behind it and could well be the next generation of avatars.
We see this as not only a great opportunity for the disability sector, but moving forward into other
areas, maybe aged care, veterans affairs, the normal social welfare services that we offer up. When
citizens interact with Federal government, maybe they are interacting with an avatar moving
forward rather flat chat systems or email or sitting on telephony channels or coming into a service
centre. Avatars may provide the deep, rich interaction we are after. We hope to see NDIS avatars.
Gamification and immersive technologies. One sector that does this extremely well is the serious
gaming sector. If you look at the technologies they are rolling out, they are very inexpensive
technologies. Things like Oculus Rift, which immerses gamers into a whole different world of virtual
reality. The avatars that sit behind that for the humans to interact with.
Some of the things like Omni-Treadmill, which allows gamers to move around in virtual worlds, all of
these we will look at in the NDIS build moving forward to see what the worth is in allowing people to
move from their physical world into digital channels in a more effective manner.
Because it is the key of people who may be physically constrained from interacting with government
or suppliers or providers, this may provide the key to move more effectively into those digital
channels.
I will talk about a C2G2B model, consumer to government to business, and we think immersive
technologies will be at the heart of this–participants and providers meeting in a space where those
providers can very effectively offer up services to the participant community to provide a rich
experience, not just an E-Marketplace, something like a mall, where people can meet and it
becomes a full community sector online. You can build this across many different communities, not
just people with disability, maybe veterans, maybe the aged care sector, maybe the childcare
sector.
It becomes a bit of eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Trip Advisor… You build out a whole community, and
that is what we are talking about here today.
One capability which will be at the heart as we move forward, and another force multiplier, is
analytics. And some of the insight that analytics will allow us to gain. At DHS we talk about analytics
across three levels - what we call operational intelligence, business intelligence and one we are just
starting to build at the moment with IBM as we move down the IBM Watson journey is cognitive
intelligence.
We use operational intelligence every day to make decisions about whether we make payments to
Australian citizens– is it a fraudulent payment, a payment that doesn't look right and we need to go
back and have another look at it before we make the payment? And we use technology as such is
SAP HANA and HANA appliances to make those split-second decisions.
In the business intelligence space, we have a massive amount of information in our business data
warehouse reaching back 30 years. When you interact with us across the Centrelink and Medicare
Master programs, there is a huge wealth of data that sits behind that enterprise data warehouse
that we have been sharing with NDIS as we start to look at where we should be focusing services
across Australia to service the disabled sector moving forward.
With the cognitive intelligence piece, we are focusing heavily not just on structured data, but getting
a full understanding of the disability sector by using unstructured data. Looking at the internet,
seeing what sentiment there is around services that are being offered up as the NDIS moves
forward. I think this will be one of the really exciting parts of what we do with NDIS moving forward.
And the analytics will provide excellent research opportunities.
One of the elements of feedback we got from the United States is that a lot of US universities see
this as a rich field to come in and really study what we are building out here in Australia. In the US,
many of these programs are very state-based. This is a national based program and if we get the
analytics right and if we do the right data collection, we are going to have a real, rich bunch of
research opportunities moving forward. This in turn will make the program even better.
If we look at what a customer to government to business platform may look like–as I said, it just
doesn't concentrate on what we can do in the disability sector, the model can also be used in other
areas such as aged care, child care, veterinary care etc. Many of those have a participant sitting on
the left of the architecture and on the right you have providers or suppliers of services. In the
middle, you have got a large public cloud where participants and suppliers come together.
Once again, I see this as another force multiplier. It allows, by citizens getting on there and voting
with their feet and being able to moderate some of the services being provided, much like we see in
many other digital channels in the wider commercial world and many of the other disruptive
technologies that we currently see in things such as AirBNB and Uber where Australian and world
citizens are giving the thumbs up or down to services, we should be able to lift the quality of services
being provided by suppliers.
By throwing analytics over the top, we can get an understanding about business opportunities for
providers, areas of opportunity where the market may be a little bit shallow and services need to be
built out. Or areas of saturation in the market where it is just not worth providers rushing in to
provide services. All of that equals better outcomes for participants and allows participants to vote
with their feet and, hopefully, get better value for money because it should drive down the cost of
services in the community as a whole.
When I talk about community, it is not just about trading services and looking at what could be
offered up to participants, it is about participants meeting and interacting and talking about their
sector, whether the disabled sector, childcare, or it could be a whole pile of ecosystems moving
forward. That is why NDIS is such a flagship project for us in Federal government because it can give
us a sense of what could be moving forward across many other community programs into the
future.
So here are a few screenshots about what we think something such as a C2G2B E-Marketplace could
look like. It is a snapshot of the participant portal where participants can meet and greet others,
manage appointment scheduling with people managing their participant programs, they can
communicate with providers and suppliers and manage their government-provided plans. So it
provides a complete picture of the services that they should be expecting out of this community.
This here, I talked about a Facebook where participants can get online and post their special
circumstances, just like in Facebook. People can reach out and say, “You have a similar disability to
me - how have you found a service or a provider? Hey, it is close to me.” And using geospatial
services and ESRI, disabled persons can get online and look at the services around them, and,
indeed, work out others who may be in similar circumstances and reach out and meet at areas of
interest within their geographic area.
This slide depicts what could be the start of a providers portal and the ability of providers to start
building up service catalogues so that participants can get online and look at what services are
available in certain sectors. It could leverage off provider portals that already exist, that allow
participants to drill in and look at the available services and provide feedback on what services
should be available in thinner areas of the market.
I will hand back to Marie and then we’ve got a few slides left between the two of us.
MARIE JOHNSON:
I am short. OK.
That is a big story and it needs to be for the challenges we heard earlier today in this morning's
sessions and it is all achievable. Everything you heard this morning and the things Charles and I have
outlined today are achievable and we are delivering.
We’re at the beginning. One of the most important things is that this is a greenfield, and whole of
economy and society support is required. How we engage with different sectors and the broader
ecosystem–we have heard that term a lot–does not happen by serendipity, but rather by planning
and engaging.
We have an illustration here of the way in which we are in the process of speaking across different
sectors. There are clearly a lot of questions that people have. What will it be like in my area? What
does it mean for me in my situation, my family? What does it mean for the services that I, as a
provider, will be delivering now and in the future?
So there are many questions... There's a phone ringing. There are many questions that,
understandably, are being raised and importantly from participants themselves. We can only learn
from that. That’s a good thing.
Putting in place engagement with the broader industry across a whole range of things. We will need
to collaborate on the development of APIs and some of that DHS itself will lead and others through
innovation.
Global standards for user experience. For people with disability and beyond. This is where I think it is
a game changer that Charles mentioned. We will work across not only the technology sector, but
with universities and financial intermediaries also. This is a big work plan and we are at the
beginning only.
We heard from many of our big companies such as SAP, IBM and Microsoft plus local entrepreneurs,
all work together. We need to all participate in this story of social reform.
This is the story around the NDIA technology strategy. We see that it is a different paradigm of
technology strategy within government because it extends beyond government.
I keep going back to Bruce Bonyhady's presentation. This is an opportunity both for technology and
innovation to work together to drive a whole of economy change. It is like our moon-shot for
Australia and the world. It will spark innovation, we know, and utilising the best and most innovative
concepts that are already being explored in R&D labs now. We think about those horizons that we
talked about. The NDIA and DHS will have a deep and ongoing collaboration with industry and
research.
I think it's important to realise that this is not just about the disability sector. Many of the things I
have heard today say that this will reform, broadly, service delivery in government and how we
actually think about the way in which services are delivered.
Yes, it is good to be able to put documents on a website enabled by Tim Berners-Lee's wonderful
early web standards, but it is another thing to have human-machine interaction, cognitive
intelligence, driven by the next wave of standards that, because of this program, the NDIA, the
Australian government and the Australian economy have the opportunity to not only participate in,
but to drive.
I am going to pause there because I know there are probably a lot of questions. Thank you for your
time.
(Applause)
FIONA PAYNE:
Thank you, Marie and Charles. I believe we have 15 minutes left for question time. I would
encourage you to ask questions. I would like to reflect too on Karni Liddell's comments this morning
about the desire for human connectedness. I think what we are seeing in the development of the ICT
solution is a great example of that connectedness.
The agency is reaching out to other government organisations, service providers, but for me, and
Marie will probably know this from my role on the ICT committee, the real engagement with the
people who will be using the system, people with disability, having a lead role in shaping what the
system will look like and the benefits it will derive for them and their community.
I will open the floor for questions. Is the roving mic gone? They are in the audience and you might
need to come up and answer, if that is OK.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR:
Christian Grieves from Dubbo. A lot of what you were talking about relies on people having high
cognitive functioning, that is what it seems like, anyway.
What sort of thought and ideas related to how this might work for people who struggle with dealing
with technology? And what can be done to really make that group of people who have an
intellectual disability really benefit from this type of design?
MARIE JOHNSON:
Thank you for the question. It’s the heart of what we are doing. About 60% of the 460,000 people
will have some form of autism or intellectual disability. So perhaps your point was not brought out
sufficiently in the presentation, but the experience for people in those situations, and for everybody,
is in context.
The way in which those people interact will be different and personalised to their particular
situation, supported on many occasions by families and carers. Some of the examples we were giving
about having gamified content is an illustration of exactly the point that you raise. It will need to be
tailored and re-rendered to be able to be meaningful and relevant for people with those particular
needs.
We will do that by working very deeply with those groups, together, and already that is happening,
getting that feedback, so it is very much a two-way street. It is early days. What Charles and I and
the NDIA wanted to share with you today is the change in which we are bringing this about.
From my perspective, technology and digital is not meant to be a divide. It is meant to augment, to
make the human experience much more meaningful and in a particular way.
FIONA PAYNE:
The woman in the white jacket?
QUESTION FROM FLOOR:
Abby Frost from the Productivity Commission. I am interested in the idea that transparency and
unstructured data drive service delivery improvement. Do you foresee there will be something akin
to Trip Advisor where people can rate their experience and do you think it will drive improvements
in service delivery and how does it fit in with the overlaying regulations and quality framework that
the NDIA has?
CHARLES McHARDIE:
I think it is an interesting principle–a bit of self-moderation from the participants and feedback from
the participants based on their experiences with providers, which is a very interesting concept in a
Federal government setting. Indeed, that is how the real world operates now online for many
services.
We are going through this debate in Australia at the moment on taxi services versus Uber. And
people say, "If I hop in a taxi and go to the airport and have a bad experience, what do I do? Tell the
taxi company that I didn't like this driver and the car was filthy and he didn't know where he was
going and we got lost..?” You can't really imagine doing that because it is a pain to provide that
feedback.
Whereas if you go into the disruptive new service offering, Uber, you can do that online. Indeed,
those that are not performing well will get weeded out and eventually not used.
You have probably had many of those experiences yourself with providers. How many people have
been to an extremely busy doctor's surgery and you may sit for hours at times waiting for a doctor. If
that happens all the time, it is probably something we need to share with others. Despite the fact
that the service providers may not like it, it would be a great way to moderate the services and
provide a better outcome for participants within that model, particularly when there are
government dollars involved. Does that answer your question?
FIONA PAYNE:
Question from the gentleman at the front here.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR:
Andrew Andrews from Adelaide, I am a consultant. This brave new world we are entering into opens
up challenges for data governance and the privacy of the individual’s information and what they are
prepared to release to others. How have you explored those problems?
MARIE JOHNSON:
Privacy underpins this and the discussion around government as a platform provides the
participants, and in fact the whole ecosystem, with a high level of assurance around privacy and the
systems that DHS are putting into place, all security controlled, etc., absolutely are integral to
safeguarding privacy.
The various experiences that we shared with you, potentially through Second Life, is not a Wild West
kind of experience. That one will be rendered in that safe environment, but in a context someone
might be familiar with. Privacy is fundamental. When we get to the related question about
transparency and feedback, I think that is a different issue to privacy.
These are not unknown issues. I don't know if it answers your question. Charles, you might like to
add something in here because of DHS’s other major programs.
CHARLES McHARDIE:
When we put this slide up of the C2G2B model, there was a cloud at the bottom and that is where
the customer data sits. That is not unlike what we currently have in Centrelink where your data is
looked after and there is a whole lot of rules and regulations around that. Running analytics over the
top and offering up data to build out the market will all be with obfuscated data, we do a great deal
of that in research areas already, so we can do longitudinal data slices and offer up to providers etc.
but the customers' data is sacrosanct.
FIONA PAYNE:
There is a question down the back and then to the one at the front.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR:
Paul Larkham, Queensland Disability Advisory Council. I have a question about affordability for
participating NDIS recipients. One of the greatest divides we notice in the sector is an economic
divide. Over 80%, as we found out this morning, of the disability population are out of work.
How does a participant in NDIS afford the level of technology to interact in the platforms you are
talking about?
MARIE JOHNSON:
Thank you for the question. I think there are many answers to that. At one level, this is a common
way of accessing government services. And so one version of that is to go on to a government
website and to do it that way. In that way, there is no charge. What we are doing here is making that
interaction quite contextual to that person and their needs.
If that person has access to various forms of technology, whether it is through their own home, their
own carers, it raises a broader question therefore about the other supports that an individual may
need in their own plan. I think there are some other questions where that can be answered. There is
a broader question for Australia around broadband access and what this means.
We will also be looking at the rollout of the NBN and its connection to this. Your question has many
layers–from what an individual has access to, how they access the government platform which we
will make highly contextual, understanding the person's own context, but, of course, there is the
broader issue around broadband connectivity in the country.
That is something that DHS has a lot of experience in–in knowing how it affects services in different
areas. Perhaps if we could have a further conversation, you can get my contact details and we can
talk further.
CHARLES McHARDIE:
So participants plans can be utilised to buy some of these assistive technologies as well. We are
hoping there will be a whole pile of start-ups dealing with innovation. Cheap ways to allow people
with physical and intellectual abilities to be able to get into digital channels. Better mouse or better
ways of using retina tracking, souping up connect devices so that participants can actually buy them
as part of their participant plans and plug them into whatever they are using, whether their mobile
phone or a desktop device or tablet... Does that help? Yes.
FIONA PAYNE:
Question from the gentleman in the third row.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR:
Tom Sexton from Bedford Group in South Australia. You have provided a good overview of where
the ICT strategy is and a broad timeframe, but what guidance is available, if any, for providers who
currently look at their own systems and potentially are investing a reasonable amount of money to
get their systems up to scratch in perhaps a shorter timeframe or in anticipation, given the rollout is
starting to affect providers now and they may not be able to wait for three years for the full rollout?
MARIE JOHNSON:
We will do a couple of different things for this important question. The first aspect of the question is
having an ongoing engagement with the broader industry. Having events like this is one, and having
more specific discussions. The agency does undertake those in other areas within the agency.
Being able to do co-design with providers is something that is starting to happen and will continue as
we go through. So quite specific co-design sessions with different providers, and getting an
understanding of what that means for providers in how they currently operate and how they may
choose to connect to the system in different ways.
This is the beginning of the multi-program, which is why we are putting in place a considerable plan
of engagement around it. We do understand that providers would like a couple of different
considerations regarding their own business and technology strategies, and we think the way to do
that is to have specific engagements with providers and do co-design with them.
We know there will be at different points interfaces to the system and APIs, and what does that
mean for providers, as well. There will be specific engagement on that. Our details are here and
there will be more information provided to providers about that particular question you asked.
FIONA PAYNE:
Frances, in the blue dress, and then probably time for one more question after that.
FRANCIS:
Thank you. I am Frances Buchanan from NDS and I used to be an OT. With that hat on I am asking
this. I am fascinated by avatars. In this brave new world, would we go so far as to use avatars for
some of the functions within NDIS, for example, planning avatars where people could have multiple
interactions with their avatar before their plan is developed. The person may have some consistency
- the avatar will not need to take parental leave etc... Plus there would be cost savings as well.
CHARLES McHARDIE:
Completely agree. Avatars will provide a nice friendly front end for those expert systems I talked
about. We are now on the cusp of being able to inject a whole pile of policy and procedure into
some of these virtual assistants now, so that they become experts and they provide consistency.
One of the issues we have in DHS is across things like the Centrelink Master program. A customer
will come in and interact with us through one of our channels - such as coming to a DHS office. If
they do not get the answer from one customer service officer, they may go to another office down
the road and they will go fishing until they get the right answer.
The problem there is inconsistent advice may be provided across these customer service officers. If
you have an expert system that is helping those customer service officers or, indeed, if you go to the
next step which is an avatar sitting on the front end of an expert system that always provides
consistent advice, knows all of the policies and procedures inside out, when you do things like
planning for participant plans, that is a good tool, so I completely agree.
FIONA PAYNE:
This might be the final question, the lady with her hand up.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR:
Let's hope you let us customise our avatars as to who we would like to look at. (Laughs)
My question is a bit different. I can see how the model of consumer to government business would
work and I think it is cool, just hopefully more user-friendly than some of the current MyGov
functions.
What I want to know is if someone wants to develop a new app they will obviously interface with
some of the systems, but do they come to talk to you or go somewhere else?
MARIE JOHNSON:
Great question and it is a combination of different approaches. The engagement program we are
putting in place will have a number of different types of activities such as hackathons. The
engagement the NDIA has with the Australian Information Industry Association has, as part of that…
Is Byron Riessen in the room, from the AIIA? He is at the conference.
Having the AIIA set up a special interest group, specifically around the type of questions that we may
need to drive further our breakthrough thinking on. It may draw on start-up committee and research
sectors.
So they are well established with their footprint to do that and they will probably do that through
their special interest group on our behalf, but I think it will also be brought to the table from others
in the industry as well. That will evolve over time. Likely what we will do is initially pose those
challenge questions in the typical way.
But we do fully expect there will be innovation happening in the ecosystem and it will be commercial
opportunity, not something necessarily directed from the NDIA. We see it as a catalyst to all of that,
not up to serendipity though but a program to get it on its way. If you are interested, send us a note
and we can keep you connected.
FIONA PAYNE:
Thank you, our audience, for your interest in this subject and your very useful questions. Could you
join me in thanking Charles and Marie?
(Applause)
FIONA PAYNE:
Enjoy the rest of your evening and I hope those of you who are heading to the conference dinner
enjoy that also.