The culture of the National Disability Insurance Agency and its ability to manage the scheme's massive growth will be put under the microscope as part of a new probe.
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Federal Parliament's NDIS committee has launched a wide-ranging inquiry into the agency, which has faced upheaval since Labor swept to power at the federal election in May.
The committee's chair, Labor MP Libby Coker, said "community concerns" about aspects of the agency's services had prompted the inquiry.
"There has been a deterioration in the level of participants' trust in the system. It is important we restore trust," she told ACM.
The review comes as NDIS Minister Bill Shorten admitted the proportion of senior agency staff with a disability was too low, after internal figures showed the NDIA was struggling to meet its own targets for representation.
The parliament inquiry has been announced amid a challenging period for the NDIA, which is grappling with a leadership shake-up and the ongoing pressures of a running a scheme forecast to cost almost $34 billion this financial year.
The NDIA is looking for a new chief executive and board chair after controversial former boss Martin Hoffman and ex-Liberal premier Denis Napthine resigned after the election.
While the former Coalition government significantly boosted the budget for participant payments to keep pace with the scheme's growth, it didn't do the same for the agency's funding.
Under its terms of reference, the new inquiry will examine the NDIA's culture and capability, and how it "impacts the experiences of people with a disability and NDIS participants trying to access information, support and services from the agency".
Ms Coker said recommendations would be handed down mid next year.
"All agencies of government, including the NDIA, should expect their performance to be monitored. Transparent scrutiny is essential to meeting and improving service delivery standards of any government body," she said.
People with Disability Australia president Sam Connor welcomed a review into the agency's culture.
"It is recognised that the culture of the agency is something that has been very focused on cost minimisation and economic rationalisation, and treating the NDIS as a welfare scheme rather than an insurance scheme," Ms Connor said.
One of the issues which could be scrutinised is the agency's conduct during legal battles with participants who are fighting cuts to their funding.
New cases to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal skyrocketed in the past financial year, with the agency at one point spending an average of $4 million a month on lawyers' fees.
Mr Shorten has promised to establish a new alternative dispute resolution process for participants who suffer severe funding cuts, which he hopes will reduce the number of AAT cases.
Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, who sits on the NDIS committee, said the "lawyers picnic" must end and participants, not service providers, should be at the heart of the scheme.
Meanwhile, figures released under freedom of information suggest the NDIA is failing to meet its targets for the portion of staff with a disability.
As of May 31, just five cent of the agency's 71 senior executive staff identified as having a disability - well short of its target of 12 per cent.
About 10 per cent of the agency's 5075-strong APS workforce have a disability, which is also short of its target.
Mr Shorten said the percentage in the senior ranks was too low, declaring it should be 15 per cent or higher.
He said the new government was committed to increasing the number of people with a disability across all roles, although he didn't detail how.
"For a decade, people with disability and NDIS participants were subjected to a government who did not have them at the centre of decisions in their interest. This stopped when Labor won government in May," he told ACM.
The figures revealed in the freedom of information request were lower than those in the NDIA's corporate plan, which, for example, stated that 12 per cent of senior staff in 2021-2022 had a disability.
Asked to explain the discrepancy, an NDIA spokesman said the figures from the freedom of information documents came from the agency's HR data, which he said typically underreported the rates of disability across the workforce.
He said the corporate plan used APS census results, which reported higher rates due, in part, to the option for respondents to remain anonymous.
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Dan covers federal politics from Parliament House, with a special focus on climate policy and the NDIS. He has previously reported on ACT politics and urban affairs since joining the Canberra Times in 2018.
Dan covers federal politics from Parliament House, with a special focus on climate policy and the NDIS. He has previously reported on ACT politics and urban affairs since joining the Canberra Times in 2018.
