I suspect this is a system where the result is inevitable:
- Positive feedback: earning money for your company.
- Negative feedback: none
- Resources: vulnerable people
Adding negative feedback (eg watchdogs, regulators, financial consequences) can get you most of the way there to fixing this, but even a few remaining % of abuse is still a lot of actual vulnerable people getting mistreated. A well engineered solution to this problem would include removing the positive feedback; not just adding negative feedback.
EDIT: Addendum: Unlike financial resources, which can be fixed/repaid/etc when something goes wrong in a few % of cases, vulnerable people can’t always be “fixed” after abuse. This is a key difference that the people making these policies and systems seem to be unaware of.
As an NDIS participant let me just say it is way too easy for providers, regardless of their registration status, to commit fraud and exploit participants. It happened to me once where a provider charged my plan for services they didn’t deliver. Reported it with the regulator but it was such a small amount that it just falls down the priority list. It’s an open secret how incapable the ndis regulator is and how few teeth it has. The ndis is essentially a free market system being used to distribute resources to vulnerable people without a functioning regulator. This particular incident also could have been prevented if the ndia provided a form of public service based case management like it was originally supposed to.
