The Guardian | R Roberts/Alamy
The shift towards algorithmic decision-making, as Guardian Australia revealed in February, can be seen in the new Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT)… The IAT is a rules-based algorithm that sorts aged care applicants into one of eight funding levels, determining both the amount of home care they receive and where they are placed in the queue for services. The tool was intended to enable a faster, fairer and more consistent process for determining eligibility for subsidised aged care. It works like a computerised questionnaire, using scored questions and rules to place applicants into categories of need. The assessments are conducted face to face, but the assessor’s job is mostly limited to feeding information into the algorithm.