Australia NDIS gets blockchain-powered app and disabled Australians will soon be getting an app that implements a social welfare compliance system devised by the same people who created automatic debt. However, this is not good news at all. The point is that it is clear that the Australian government intends to extend technology-driven compliance to all Australians, with an emphasis on punishing their failures rather than theirs.
The long-term goal, according to Kathryn Campbell, Secretary of the Department of Social Services, is to have a single application for all government services in the Commonwealth. He said last month that the idea is for one to rule everything, presumably unaware of how horrible that sounds. Senators across the country are already concerned that software designed for National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) members to claim expenses against their assistance plan will go the way of COVIDSafe.
It is reported that millions of dollars have been wasted on ineffective technology. The goal was to improve the web experience and allow the submission of claims from mobile devices. Web3 payment solutions were also considered. According to Martin Hoffman, executive director of the National Disability Insurance Administration (NDIA), the pilot program has been very popular and well received, with feedback particularly favorable. In addition, he wrote that in the coming months, the software will be fully available on Google Play and the Apple app store. Additionally, this technology is being rolled out at the same time as the NDIA prepares for a people-driven, data-driven compliance system.
NDIA’s target is similar to what Centrelink did to welfare users with its so-called debt theft programme. In fact, several of the same bureaucrats are participating. Rick Morton writes in The Saturday Paper that two senior government employees involved in the formation of the debt-robbery program now work in the enforcement office of the National Disability Insurance Agency. It was a real cultural change. The focus shifted from identifying questionable care providers to disabled service clients.
As with the robodebt, it would now be the responsibility of the individual to demonstrate compliance. The NDIA is also working on a concept known as automated planning, in which the NDIA’s computer algorithm will determine a disabled person’s personalized budget before they meet with a human being to organize their assistance programme. Australia’s National Audit Office had warned that the NDIA used data matching to prevent fraudulent claims in 2019, but automatic planning seems to go too far. Australia NDIS gets an application with blockchain and we are going to find out its ins and outs in this article.
Is Australia following the path left by the UK?
In 2018, the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) collaborated with CSIRO’s Data61 and the Commonwealth Bank to test blockchain-based smart money for scheme payments that could magically determine whether or not an expense was valid. According to blockchain critic David Gerard, who is also a blockchain realist, Australia’s plan echoes a similar concept detailed in the 2016 UK government paper Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Blockchain. In the meantime, more information about their plans can be found on the NDIS YouTube channel.
In his 2017 book, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, Gerard wrote that the heart of the study is a complicated plan to put all of UK social welfare on a unified blockchain, with purchases accessible only via a phone. smart DRMed. The goal of this strategy is to allow more granular tracking of people’s buying patterns. He added that this document was literally prepared by blockchain and smart contract promotion companies and advisors. At the time, he made spectacular claims about the capabilities of blockchain technology and the case studies were completely imaginary.
He emphasized that the most notable feature of this proposal is that none of its components is realistic. Also, the accompanying film is greatly improved if it’s narrated by [comedy character] Philomena Cunk. In his own episode of Moments of Wonder about money, Cunk wryly posed an intriguing question: “When you have a coin, where is the money?” How did UK’s proposed blockchain-based welfare payments fare?
Gerard wrote that the experiment in this proposal was so unsuccessful that the whole concept was scrapped and government employees believed that blockchain was no longer in vogue. He wrote that this is the country that runs the lousy Universal Credit scheme, in which a million people depend on food banks; Despite this, the blockchain scheme was so terrible that people dismissed it.
Gerard believes the Australian plan will follow a similar path. The best hope for this terrible concept is that it cannot work if it is on a blockchain. According to him, there are indications that Gerard is right in the DTA’s own account of the February 2019 trials. There are only moderately optimistic statements, such as “blockchain technology is promising.”
Opportunities and challenges for implementation
They didn’t build a centralized database solution to benchmark its performance against the smart money proof-of-concept, which can deliver a comparable front-end user experience. However, should smart money be used in more welfare situations outside of the NDIS, additional work may be required to ensure adequate performance and anonymity. Australia NDIS gets an application with blockchain and this raises a lot of questions.
Simply put, the technology is slow and lacks proper privacy measures. The DTA wrote that one of the most surprising aspects was the magnitude of the difficulty in collecting all the information necessary to make conditional payments through the institution’s network. This included payments to ordinary businesses that provide services to NDIS participants (for example, travel and digestive aids). In other words, suppose a disabled person took a taxi. Was the trip part of your treatment plan and therefore a justifiable expense, or was it for something else?
The design problem involves both efficient data collection and processing (either using blockchain or a centralized database). Concerned about latency and throughput, the paper suggests focusing future research and development efforts on examining alternative blockchain networks and pre-authorizing payments using pre-existing blockchain information at the time of payment authorization.
You can also use a standard database. This technology is well known and the fewer moving components there are, the less likely it is for something to go wrong. More worrisome is the disregard for security. The document wrote that security policy requirements and implementation techniques for blockchain-based conditional payments were not studied as part of this project. However, as one subtitle says, “The potential is exciting.”
NDIA claims they are not using Blockchain technology
Recent statements made by the NDIA and the government indicate that their forthcoming application is in no way connected to the 2018 study. This trial was conducted independently of the NDIA by the Commonwealth Bank in collaboration with Data61 at the CSIRO. An NDIA spokesperson said the trial’s focus was based on funding from the NDIS. However, the NDIA did not commission the trial or act on any of its findings.
As part of the government’s ongoing monitoring and improvement of its operations, the NDIA is conducting a pilot project to test an application that has the potential to simplify the process by which a participant could submit payment claims. They wrote that blockchain technology is not used in this regard. The NDIS payment system will not implement blockchain or SmartMoney technology anytime soon, as per the Agency’s current plans.
Ethics and participation of people
Ethical considerations are almost entirely absent from the Making Money Smarter study, which is a major flaw. In a presentation to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS, former head of the Technology Authority, Marie Johnson, wrote that when it comes to the implementation of blockchain technology, extreme vigilance is required due to the extraordinarily complicated nature of the blockchain environment. NDIS, as well as the presence of faulty procedures and vulnerable people.
He claimed that blockchain, like other technological advances, does not address basic design and human rights concerns. Integrity is paramount. In addition, he asserted that the Commonwealth Bank’s involvement itself raises additional ethical concerns, given the value of participants’ information and the safety of individuals, the scale of the market, and the treasure trove of the electronic marketplace for data, finance, and services.
Annually, the NDIS shells out $25 billion according to government reports. Additionally, Johnson is concerned about the lack of co-design in the NDIA’s laws and procedures. This, she says, indicates that the end-to-end human experience does not impact design and that the human experience is not protected by a rigorous and independent ethical framework. Humans are not in the loop.
User testing is different from codesign. Secretary Campbell’s description of “an app to rule the world” omitting user requirements. He said it would make life a lot easier if people knew when they had upcoming appointments, when they had appointments, when they had to turn in documents and the like, and when they had to pay their taxes. So this is the government’s long-term digital strategy.
These are all things that citizens must do to keep the government compliant; otherwise, they will be penalized. Where is the recognition of the government’s duty to serve its citizens and ensure that they receive all the benefits due to them? Yes, it’s a genuine cultural shift in terms of government compliance. This was critical to understand, especially when Australia NDIS gets an application with blockchain. Simply put, it’s obvious what they intend to do here, and you don’t need crypto or blockchain to enslave people with unenforceable rule policing.
