Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 3:25:55 to 3:29:45
Discussion on the technical ability to override assessment outcomes and the legal constraints surrounding its use within the system.
Topics: Government IT systems, Social services
Speakers: Senator The Hon Anne Ruston, Mr Greg Pugh, Ms Sonja Stewart, Mr Blair Comley, Unknown Speaker
Um it said that the functionality for human override was built into the system. Is that correct?
Yes, that's been our um we've provided evidence beforehand around the way that the system operates, which is that there is an override that's built into the system depending on the needs of the older person. So for example, if they're going into support at home CHSP, residential perhaps end of life as well. Um did you want to go into more detail? So there needs to the system needs to have, if you like, gateways in which uh once the assessment happens, which part of the service system is that older person going to? So it needs that, needs an override function.
Just to supplement that, Senator. Um I responded, I think, to Senator Wallman Payne's question earlier on this. So the uh override function exists uh to enable diversion into those other pathways that Ms. Stewart has just set out and the way that we manage the support at home ongoing classifications one to eight is to have a very clearly decmarcated warning sign that says you cannot override the outcome of this. Uh if you do that, that is against the law. And then we want to that very closely. So it feeds into our assurance process as well.
So there was never the capacity to do what you just described.
Say that again, sorry.
There was never a capacity built into the legislation to do what you just described, only what Ms. Stewart's described.
That's correct. Yes, it'll understand your question correctly.
So you're saying that there was never any capacity to override the decision. There was only a capacity to override the direction that the person was sent. Is that what you just said? Well that's what Ms. Stewart just said.
So that functionality does exist.
The second part, but there's no functionality has ever been built into the system to do the first part. Is that what you're telling me?
No, so the functionality to enable an override exists uh but it's only lawful for uh pathways outside of ongoing support at home classifications one to eight. So technically someone can override that if they wanted to.
When you say someone, sorry, so the capacity exists within the technical capacity exists for that to happen.
Yes.
But I think the advice that we received or heard was that it was sort of it was turned off at a point in time when that decision was made. Is that correct? It does it it's not been used, but technically the capacity exists to do it. It's just the decision has been not to use it.
Uh yes, I think that's correct.
I think we've previously given evidence that advice was given to advise to assessment organisations not to use it. And there were a few assessment organisations who did use it early on. And then I believe in February we turned off the functionality so that the assessment organisations were unable to use the pathway, which was in fact not supported by the law.
Okay, so in a sense, there is a technical capacity to turn it back on. It's just that you've got concerns and downstream what the implications of that is. So you can turn it back on today.
I think it is good practice to not have a function that's not supported by the law available to people.
Maybe you shouldn't have had the function that wasn't the order of the law in the first place, or maybe you should have made the law fit the function. Um okay, thank you. Um just finally on this, um, how many people are currently waiting for assessment?