The Commonwealth Ombudsman has found serious legal and administrative defects in the automated system used to determine older Australians’ eligibility, funding level and priority for home-based aged care.
In a report released on 26 October, the Ombudsman concluded that the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing acted unreasonably in administering the Single Assessment System. Its Integrated Assessment Tool converts assessors’ observations into automated decisions, but those decisions cannot presently be overridden—even where considered clinically inappropriate.
The report found that the Department introduced the current system without meaningful risk assessment, evaluation, or analysis, and that publicly available information may still not permit independent reproduction of its outcomes. It recommended amending the Aged Care Act 2024 to allow qualified delegates to make their own decisions, review the legislation and algorithmic rules, and strengthen explanations, consultation, and oversight.
Importantly, the investigation did not determine whether the algorithm itself produces clinically inappropriate results. Instead, its findings concern system design, legal authority, transparency, and accountability.
The broader lesson reaches beyond aged care. Human involvement at the input stage is not meaningful oversight if the professional cannot challenge the output. For any consequential automated decision, legality requires more than an algorithm and a review pathway: responsibility must be attached to a person with genuine authority to alter the result.
Source: Commonwealth Ombudsman report
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