National Disability Insurance Scheme plan decision-making: or when tailor-made case planning met Taylorism & the algorithms?

The National Disability Insurance Scheme ('NDIS') has been criticised for failing adequately to live up to the promise of individualised resource packages tailored to the needs of each participant, instead applying bureaucratic, standardised administrative logics. This paper analyses the legal architecture, policy assumptions and administration of the NDIS to establish the extent to which its guiding philosophy lies in professional person-centred case planning, an insurance logic, or principles of equity and efficiency of decision-making; and then assesses the contribution of legal remedies in ensuring fidelity of purpose to policy goals. It is argued that whatever the validity of criticism of NDIS Taylorist administrative standardisation and data-driven planning, it is neither an error of law nor responsive to merits review avenues. Undue weighting of equity and efficiency goals over the preferences and needs of individual participants nevertheless remains ethically problematic in unduly elevating an ethics of justice (impartial planning based on abstract principles applied consistently to all participants) over an ethics of care that views each participant as unique, as arguably the NDIS was designed to promote.