Unreasonable and unfair: damning investigation criticises Labor’s algorithm-based tool for aged care
Özet haber: Report from commonwealth ombudsman finds ‘technological black box’ ignores transparency recommendations from robodebt royal commission
Report from commonwealth ombudsman finds ‘technological black box’ ignores transparency recommendations from robodebt royal commission
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An algorithm used by the federal government to assess the level of care older Australians are entitled to is unreasonable, unfair and lacks human oversight, according to a damning investigation by the commonwealth ombudsman.
The investigation also found transparency recommendations from the robodebt royal commission have been ignored.
The legislation must be changed to allow aged care assessors to change clinically incorrect algorithmic decisions themselves, and there are also significant legal issues with the tool, the commonwealth ombudsman, Iain Anderson, told Guardian Australia on Monday.
The investigation followed reporting by Guardian Australia that older people were being left distressed and without adequate care after their home support needs were assessed by an “inhumane” algorithm as part of the government’s mandatory Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT).
Aged care assessors are barred from overriding the IAT’s funding package recommendation, even when the decision is wrong.
“Under the law, these automated decisions cannot be overridden and changed, even if they are clinically inappropriate,” the 104-page ombudsman report found.
“There is no public information available that meaningfully explains how the algorithm converts inputs into outcomes. Without this, the IAT is a technological black box.”
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It meant the IAT and its algorithm “do not merely have the potential to undermine public confidence in the administration of a fair and consistent assessment system,” the report found. “Rather, a reasonable person would, in our view, lack confidence that the system is in fact fair and consistent.”
Guardian Australia reported that those involved in developing the IAT had no idea that an algorithm would be added to it by the government by the time changes were rolled out in November.
Documents released under freedom of information reveal departmental panic, severe clinical distress among frontline assessors, and secret IT workarounds after officials realised in the hours before the rollout of the algorithm that legislation legally barred human override, and that this was causing distress within days of implementation.
“It’s very concerning that the department was telling people this system was going to operate in a particular way, showing them versions of that system, only to change it,” Anderson told Guardian Australia.
The report found: “Information provided by the department to the public suggests that key trials and consultation over several years directly supported the IAT and its associated decision-making framework in its current form, but that is not correct”.
