Looking at quality through a systems lens—Applying systems thinking to the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme

It is widely recognised that many policy systems are complex, requiring collaboration across different organisations and sectors to address socioeconomic outcomes and inequalities. Yet, the public policy literature is dominated by rational–technical frameworks that struggle to understand complex systems. This paper applies ideas from the field of applied systems to demonstrate their utility in a public administration context. We do so by applying a systems framework to analysis of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) launched a decade ago as a new approach to the funding and provision of services and supports for people with disabilities. Over the implementation period, a critical narrative has developed regarding quality and safeguards. Drawing on systems thinking, we explore evidence from five independent reviews of the NDIS to identify why these issues might have occurred. We demonstrate that the NDIS may have become ‘stuck’ because it has encountered common system traps. We find the NDIS exhibits elements of three dominant system traps as conceptualised in the systems thinking literature: seeking the wrong goal, policy resistance, and shifting the burden to an intervenor. In doing so, we show the necessity of a systems lens to explore the challenges of complex policy interventions. Complex policy interventions require frameworks that enable their interrogation in a holistic way, but there are limitations to the dominant tools currently used in public administration. Identifying where systems are ‘stuck’ in a structured way offers an alternative lens with which to create solutions. Systems thinking provides new knowledge of how system features can explain how traps emerge and are sustained. In applying this insight to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, we have demonstrated the utility of these ideas within the context of public administration.