National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA)
Administers the National Disability Insurance Scheme: decides whether a person meets the access criteria, assesses reasonable and necessary supports, and approves and reassesses plans.
Responsibilities
- Decide access requests against the disability and early intervention criteria
- Facilitate plan preparation and approve participant plans
- Conduct plan reassessments and variations
- Conduct internal review of reviewable decisions
Operates under
- National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth)
- NDIS Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Act 2024 (Cth)
The NDIA carries a statutory clock that most bodies in this database do not: the Participant Service Guarantee commits it to an access decision within 21 days of a complete application.
The words doing the work are "complete application". The clock does not start until the Agency considers the request complete, and it pauses when further information is requested. Reported end-to-end experience is two to four months for a straightforward case and six months or more for a complex one, against a 21 day guarantee. That is not a contradiction; it is the ordinary behaviour of a clock that a decision-maker can stop.
This database's position on stoppable clocks is consistent across domains: a statutory period that excludes the time the regulator itself controls is a measure of the regulator's workload, not of the applicant's wait. Both numbers should be published. Only one is.
The more serious finding about this body is downstream. In 2025-26, 64 per cent of NDIS cases decided by the Administrative Review Tribunal resulted in a changed outcome — down from 73 per cent the previous year. A first-instance decision-maker whose decisions are altered in roughly two out of three contested cases has a first-instance quality problem, and no amount of tribunal capacity fixes it. See Empty the tribunal from the top, not the bottom.
Where this body appears in a process
Every point at which National Disability Insurance Agency can hold something up, and why.
| Process | Step | Why it waits | Clock | Typical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Person with disability from seeking work to employed with supports | NDIS employment supports in the participant's plan assessment | queue | — | 90 |
| Person with disability from access request to first funded support | Lodge the access request application | applicant | — | 7 |
| Person with disability from access request to first funded support | Request treated as complete assessment | queue | — | 30 |
| Person with disability from access request to first funded support | Access decision decision | assessment | 21 | 21 |
| Person with disability from access request to first funded support | Planning conversation and needs assessment assessment | scheduling | — | 45 |
| Person with disability from access request to first funded support | Plan approval decision | assessment | — | 28 |
| Person with disability from access request to first funded support | Internal review of a reviewable decision appeal | queue | — | 90 |