NDIS Citizens’ Jury Scorecard project awarded international honour

People with Disability Australia (PWDA) has been awarded an international honour for its ground-breaking National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Citizens Jury Scorecard project.

The NDIS Citizens Jury Scorecard project gave people with disability the chance to have their say in how the NDIS is working. It was named International Project of the Year at the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Core Value Awards in Perth last night.

PWDA delivered the project in conjunction with the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and Max Hardy Consulting.

The project also won the Australasia Project of the Year Award and an Australasian Health Project Award.

PWDA President Craig Wallace said: “PWDA is thrilled we have been recognised for thinking outside the box and ensuring people with disability have their voices heard on an issue as big as the NDIS.

“The NDIS is a public asset and the Citizens’ Jury enabled a diverse group of citizens, including people with disability to develop a scorecard on this scheme after hearing from the real experts in the room – those actually receiving disability services under the new NDIS,” Mr Wallace said.

“We thank everyone who was involved in this project and the NDIA for their ongoing support and commitment to ensuring the voices of people with disability are heard.”

NDIA Acting CEO Louise Glanville said the innovative project had helped guide and shape the development of the NDIS.

“The NDIA congratulates People with Disability Australia for their work on the Citizens’ Jury Scorecard Project.

“This project has been an important part of helping us hear from people with disability as we prepare to roll out the NDIS across the country,” Ms Glanville said.

The IAP2 said there were a number of aspects of the NDIS Citizens’ Jury project which make it unique and stand out as a finalist. They include:

  • The extraordinary level of trust and commitment to the outcomes shown by the National Disability Insurance Agency senior leadership - a start-up public sector agency with a $22 billion per annum budget at maturity, in a deliberative process which exposed them to unprecedented transparency and scrutiny. The NDIS is, arguably, the biggest social reform since Medicare in the 1980’s;
  • The random selection of both jurors and witnesses to ensure that the process pulled in genuinely random and new voices to render the scorecard on the NDIS;
  • The efforts made to ensure that populations of people with disability normally excluded from jury processes were fully included, especially the innovation used to include people with intellectual disability;
  • The innovative methods used to combine random witnesses, advocate witnesses with a disability, random interviewee’s, focus groups of people with an intellectual disability and an agile use of social media to ensure that the process cut deep and wide in a way that matched the ambition of the NDIS;
  • The application of the deliberative process to a social policy space in a way that was uniquely appropriate to produce a participant lead scorecard that was uniquely timely and appropriate;
  • The work to document and film the project, to debrief and to learn from the project in a way consistent with the values of the NDIS and best practice in public participation; and
  • The steps taken to ensure the integrity, good governance and standing of the project, especially through robust application of the IAP2 core values.

Click here for more information about the full background and additional information on the NDIS Citizens’ Jury Scorecard Project .

Click here to access the Think Films documentary on the NDIS Citizens’ Jury Scorecard Project .

People with Disability Australia Incorporated (PWDA) is a national disability rights and advocacy, non-profit, non-government organisation. We have a cross-disability focus, representing the interests of people with all kinds of disability and our membership is made up of people with disability and organisations mainly constituted by people with disability.