The Data Exchange (DEX) Basics and Upcoming Changes - Presentation to First Nations Program Providers November 2025

Welcome everyone to a presentation on DEX basics and upcoming changes. This is a presentation for providers through the First Nations program. I'd like to acknowledge traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and their connections to land, water, culture and community. I pay my respect to the elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today.

My name's Tristan and I work in the DEX Policy and Operations team. The plan for today is I will start with an introduction to the basics of the Data Exchange. I'm thinking there might be some people who've had nothing to do with the Data Exchange to this point and there'll probably be some people who've had a lot to do with it. We'll also talk through privacy, consent and de-identification. Then we'll have a demonstration, a quick run through of the basic use of DEX and then we'll have a look at the reports that are available to providers in the Qlik app.

The DEXPO team, who I work for, are responsible for the technical management of the data system, setting rules and policies about the system and the use of data. We're not involved so much in the details of individual grants.

So starting off, the question is, why do we do it at all? Why do we collect data? Some of the uses of data is that it answers questions for government and also for providers. It provides insights to help you help your clients, helps government make investment decisions, and it may well help providers to make the case for the resourcing of their programs.

DEX was established in 2014 as a better way to record appropriate data. It's offered through the Community Grants Hub and is also available to other departments and state governments. The aim is for a two way partnership. That's the exchange in the Data Exchange name – it’s that idea of two-way sharing of data. It's used by DSS just for client-facing programs – services that engage directly with clients or people.

There are different ways that you can get data into DEX. They include directly entering using the DEX system, so logging in and directly entering into the portal, a system to system transfer where you have a case management system or a provider has a case management system and that automatically transfers information across at set intervals, or bulk uploads using XML format where providers have their own system, but export into XML format, then log into the web-based portal and upload the data.

The majority of DEX users input data directly into the system using the web-based portal, but some of the bigger users will use one of those automated other forms of bulk upload. And so that does mean probably the bulk of data, as that's largely the bigger users, is added into the system in one of those ways.

So this is what DEX looks like. Hopefully some people recognise that. And you can see down on the bottom right there, there's a link to where you can also access reports using your data in DEX. We'll be looking into that and giving a demo of that function later in the session.

This is the kind of information that services input and see. You can see on the left is an unidentified, what it looks like when you enter unidentified information, so without someone's name. I'm going to do that again because I've made a mistake there. This is the kind of information that services input and see. You can see on the left that's entering information about a session, and then on the right, what it looks like when you enter information about a person or a participant.

And this is the kind of information that we at the DSS end tend to be interested in. So not so much the details of individual people or individual sessions, but what the picture is like across the larger picture. So this is information here about groups of programs or services to clients over time. This slide gives a good sense of how DEX can be used, of how widely DEX has been used, with records about 70 million attendances by 15 million clients and support of people over a decade.

We're commonly asked about collecting and storing participant data. Client names and addresses are only collected and stored on the Data Exchange when they have given consent. Such consent is voluntary, and it's not linked to participants' eligibility to use a service. DSS does not access a client's name and address. Instead, a code called a statistical linkage key is used when working with data. DSS and all users of DEX are bound by the Privacy Act of 1988, which creates clear rules around how we use and manage data.

Clients help support the services they use when they give consent, as it means the data collected about those services is stronger and can be used in a wider variety of ways. This shows how data is entered for a client who has consented. So you can see the person's name, their date of birth, their gender, and so forth.

But clients can also not give consent. And you'll see in this slide, the person's name is not shown. It's listed as name hidden. When this happens, you see you create a client ID. You can see in this slide it says consent not given. But what you get there is a client number. So you start by entering the person's name. And we'll have a demonstration of this later. You enter the person's name and then you select that consent hasn't been given. The name then is removed from the system and it's removed not only for DSS, but at your end as well.

So the client ID that's generated at that point is really important to record, as that becomes the provider's only way to link that client ID number to that particular person and it's important to keep that record. If a client doesn't want to use their name or date of birth there are options. They can use a pseudonym and an estimated date of birth. It's important to note that a pseudonym is not good for creating a statistical linkage key or an SLK, as we mentioned before.

Again, providing this information, if a person is willing to, is a way that participants can support the service that they use, because it helps that service track more useful and better quality data.

DSS is in the process of changing reporting requirements in DEX. Providers have been telling us that we need to simplify reporting and make it more standard across programs. This list shows a list of data items that service providers may currently need to report.

Starting from the left, data about clients. The column on the left, that's mandatory for all clients currently. Some programs may also have to report to the second column from the left. And providers also have to report data about sessions, and some programs also will report some of the data items at the bottom of the third column from the left. And some programs report SCORE. The standard client community outcomes reporting tool, which measures client outcomes.

This shows what's changing. You can see that a number of items have been crossed out. Those things will no longer be mandatory. Programs will also need to report, will need to start recording data about group sessions, so that's sessions with more than three people in them. Previously, the unidentified clients have been able to be recorded in those sessions, which does mean that there have been a lot of unidentified clients in the DEX system.

We're introducing a census-type approach where a couple of times a year we'll be asking providers to record data in group sessions to try and get a better understanding of what's going on in those sessions and some more useful data out of them. You can see over on the right-hand side, all programs will be required to report SCORE for 50% of clients.

These changes apply for any client-facing program continuing after June 30, 2026. Services will need to collect the new dataset from March 1, 2026. Some programs that have been funded since these changes were announced are already reporting to those changes.

Okay, so that's some of the basics about DEX and we're now going to go to a demonstration of using the system.

Hello, my name's Christoph. I also work in the Data Exchange team and I will now show you what the DEX portal will look like for you. So we are in what we call the staging environment, also referred to as a sandpit environment. It is a copy of the production environment that your DEX org record will appear in.

After having logged in, you will reach this page. This is the My DEX dashboard page. On this opening page, there are some tiles that you could select, some find, view and add tiles. And then down here, there are some other links that can take you to various areas of the DEX portal. On this page, you can also access your DEX Qlik reports once you've generated some data.

Let's navigate to the Manage Organisation screen. So depending on what funding activities you are actually funded for, the names of those activities and the start and end dates will appear on this screen. The activities in this sandpit environment that are assigned to this training organisation record are these three here.

So you may notice the start date and the end date. So those start and end dates will obviously be drawn from your funding agreements and drawn from another one of DSS's systems. Let's scroll back further to the top. First we have the organisation details. Here your preferred organisation name would display and the legal trading name would appear here and then your ABN and some other details.

Next on this screen is a display of all the outlets that you have created. Now in the Data Exchange, an outlet is the physical location from where you deliver a service to your clients too. So let's add an outlet as the first item.

Here we are on the outlet creation screen. Any of the fields within the Data Exchange that have a red asterisk are mandatory fields that you have to fill out. Let's just call this one the Brisbane outlet. So that would be Brisbane. You may notice here a drop box of available selections appears from which you can make a choice. Okay, so let's save these details.

Every time that you have successfully saved an item in your Data Exchange portal, you will receive a green tick at the top of the screen. Now what we need to do next is attach one of the program activities that you're funded for to the outlet. Let's do that now. If you're only funded for one funding activity, this drop down selection box will only display one activity. If you're funded for multiple activities, it will display all of them. I'm going to select this one here.

Now the start and end date will pre-populate from your funding agreement and the details that we've drawn into the Data Exchange from that. Let's hit the save button. Okay, we've received the green tick. Down here, it tells us the details of the outlet that we've just created. So now we can go back. Now the manage organisation screen will display the outlet that you've just created.

Every time you see one of these triangles here, you can press that toggle button and it will display the details that sit underneath the data item. Here you may notice it says "ready for approval." What that means is by creating this outlet, you have created an action item as we refer to them, and the Data Exchange Help Desk team members, they are the ones that approve the outlets. For training purposes today, we have already created an outlet where all these activities have been approved.

Over here we have the "I want to" box with some quick links for actions that you can take. Let's add a client. Once again, all the fields that are marked with a red asterisk are mandatory fields. The client ID is not a mandatory field. You can put any combination of letters and numbers in there. However, you should never put any client identifiable information into the client ID field. If you choose not to put an ID in of your liking, the system will assign a numeric number to the ID field.

Now, for demonstration purposes, I'm going to use a celebrity's name that you may or may not recognise. Here we've added the first and last name. Now we are going to say that this person's name is not a pseudonym and that it's not an estimated date of birth. However, if you look after clients that prefer to use a pseudonym or that do not know their full date of birth, you may wish to tick those boxes.

Next, we add the gender. And down here, you may notice the consent boxes have been pre-ticked. We can press the next button. Now it's time to add the address details. You can see here only the suburb, the state, and the postcodes are actually mandatory items, so that's all you would need to enter. And next.

Here's some other demographic details that we're going to enter now. With these ones, you could either scroll to find the country that you want to enter, or you could press the box and start typing the first couple of letters, and then it will scroll to the selection.

We've landed on a review page here. This gives you the opportunity to review the information you have input, and you could choose to go back to fix any of the mistakes you may have made, or press the submit button.

Now as Tristan mentioned, we want to make data entry a little less burdensome for organisations. So we will opt not to input any of the extended demographics data and we simply hit skip here. Now we've received the green tick, which means that Jonathan has been added successfully.

Let's add another client. Again, I will use a person's name that you may or may not recognise that's out in the public space. This time what we're going to do is we're going to untick the consent boxes. What I would like you to do is pay particular attention to the given name and family name fields because they will be greyed-out, which means that the first name and last name and the person's street level address will be greyed- out and will not be visible even to you as the organisation.

So I'm unticking the box. Just pay attention here. You saw the name has been deleted from the system. So now we just have to enter the remaining parts of the address, and then we hit the next button. This is just repeating what we had done previously, and onto the next button. Once again, we've learned on the review page, we're happy to submit this client in, and we're going to press the skip button.

Now, as you can see here, no given name or family name is displayed. This is important to remember because if a client does not consent for you to store their first and last name in the Data Exchange, that means that you have to have some type of reference outside of the Data Exchange so you know that the client ID 007 belongs to the person who was just entered in here.

The name that I chose was Kathy Freeman. Let's have a quick look at this profile. Instead of the person's name displaying, it will show name hidden. Again, it's important that you know that client with this ID, and that you know who that is outside of the Data Exchange system.

Okay. The next thing that we have to do is we have to add a case. Think of a case as a folder that we store information in. Now we have to attach the case to an outlet as the available one. And we want to tell the system the activity that we want to link this case to. Here, at the case level, you would indicate if you have any identified clients or not. You can type that in using these toggles, or you can manually type it in.

We're going to say there are no unidentified clients for this case. Now here, we need to attach clients to the case. So at the bottom here, all the clients that you have entered would appear. If there are more than 10 clients that you have entered already, there would be several pages displayed at the bottom.

So I've made this selection now, and I'm going to press the attach selected clients button. Now it tells us Jonathan has been attached, and if we wanted to, we could also add this client here, but we're just going to select Jonathan for the training purposes. Again, we have landed on our review page, giving us the option to go back to make any changes or we submit. Again, we have a green tick here telling us that this case has been successfully added.

Now at the bottom here, there are some options for the next steps that you may want to do. So let's add a session. Now in the Data Exchange, the session refers to an instance of service delivery or an episode of service delivery. This is where we capture the specifics of the services that you have delivered to your client.

First, there's the session date. You can use the calendar function and you can scroll back like this, or you can manually type in the date. Let's just use the calendar for this. Let's say it was the 3rd of July that we delivered a service from.

Now the service type, the list for the service types will display again in drop-down fashion. The available service types are only those for the funding activity that you're reporting the session for. So this may differ from funding activity to funding activity. Let's select intake and assessment.

There are some other options here that you can choose. Service setting, for example, if you want to say that you've delivered the service from the organisation, outlet, or perhaps this will also be a telephone or a video call. However, you do not have to input these data fields.

Next, we're going to attach the client to the session. Then we hit the next button. Once again, here's a review page. Now we've successfully added this session. What we can do from here is we can select and look at the session ID, sorry, the session details via this hyperlink. It tells us all the details pertaining to this session.

Now we want to add a SCORE assessment to the session too. Down here, this little symbol here, you can press the add first SCORE button. Let's do that. Okay, so it's time to add a client SCORE.

Now for individual clients, there are three options: Circumstances, Goals, or Satisfaction. Let's use Goals this time. There are also some "assessed by" options here. So it could be that the client entered the SCORE directly, that the SCORE was entered by a practitioner, or that it was done by both the practitioner and the client. There are also some validated outcome tools that can be used. Let's enter the SCOREs as the practitioner here.

Next, we want to see the domains that are available for Goals SCORE. These are the SCORE domains that can be selected. There are also some definitions for each of these that can be viewed by selecting this hyperlink here. It gives you an idea of the different selections that are available. You could also refer to your program specific guidance to see the definitions in a slightly different format.

Here let's say, because the client has presented at the start of service delivery, that they may test on the lower end of the Likert scale. Let's just select A2 and perhaps A1 over here. Now we save this.

Now it tells us that the SCORE has been successfully added and that the session cannot be deleted as there are client and/or session SCORE associated with this session. What that means is if you have made a mistake and you realise that you didn't actually want to record this SCORE and this session against Jonathan, what you need to do is you would need to delete the SCORE assessment first before you can delete the session.

Let's have a look at what that looks like in detail here. It tells us the detail of the SCORE assessment that we've just added there. So you have the option to edit this or to delete it.

That concludes the demonstration of the system.

Thank you, Christoph. Now we're going to go Tushar for the final item in today's training. Tushar's going to show us through some of the reports available using your DEX data once you've entered it.

Thank you, Tristan. I'll just go through the reporting that's available for you on the Qlik platform, which is a platform that collects the data from DEX and then puts that into a visual format for you to review and analyse.

So there is one location where you need to navigate to in Qlik. I'll have a demonstration of the various reports and I'll step through the various reports a little bit later on. But there's one stream that you called and a stream is equivalent to a folder. So you navigate to that folder or stream and it's called the DEX Org standard reports.

There are three app’s and an app would be similar to a report that you can access, and each of the reports have multiple tabs. So the main app that you'd be using would be the organisational overview, and that will give you an overview of performance statistics and some analysis around the information that Christoph shared with you earlier.

If you're looking at identifying data quality issues that need rectification, then you should navigate to the Organisational Data Quality app. And if you're looking at just reviewing the data that's been submitted, then you can go to the Submitted Data Details app.

So what sort of information can you get in these apps? The organisational overview provides key organisational performance statistics and analysis, and it includes things like the number of clients and support people, the attendances, sessions and cases over a specific timeframe and across a specific geography. That information can be broken down by activity, service type, and demographic data point, such as gender, etc.

The submitted data details org will help you check your data to remediate any issues, and that's down to the client and support person level case information or case details and session information. But that particular app doesn't have any performance metrics.

The organisational data quality report or the app identifies the key data quality issues that need rectification. It's broken down by outlet activity and the specific analysis provided by underlying KPI or attribute, which is statistical linkage key, which has already been mentioned by Tristan. This is a 14 character key that's made up of a number of different items like the first and last name, date of birth and gender, so it's kept quite anonymous. The SLK allows client outcome data to be matched over time and across various programs without disclosing the identity of the individual client. So it's really a method of de-identification and it's not visible to anybody in the department.

There's also demographic detail breakdown. There's a breakdown by unidentifiable clients and session information. So you can get all sorts of issues with data quality across those four areas.

If you are part of the partnership program, then you will also get access to some additional insights, which is around client outcomes and community outcomes, which really provides you more information around SCORE information. So that's things around your assessment rates, circumstances, goals and satisfaction indicators across the various domains and activities and demographics. That can also be shown at an outlet level. We can also provide de-identified session and assessment details as well. This is done at a community level, but you can get similar outcomes across circumstance, goals and satisfaction indicators as well.

As Christoph mentioned in the report, you can get access to your reports by going to your dashboard and navigating and clicking on the link that says "access my DEX reports" on your home screen.

So I've loaded up the first report and this is the organisational overview report and we're in the stream. Here, and this is demonstration data, so there's no sensitive client information in this at all. It's purely dummy data, but it gives you an idea of what's in the report.

This is a specific app. It's the organisational overview app. Within it, there are a number of sheets in this app. We'll start at the first sheet. The first sheet really provides you a bit of an overview of what's in the report, what the purpose is, what reporting period this has been applied to and also the version of the report. So there'll be multiple iterations and versions; it will tell you what version of the report you're looking at, the frequency of the data refresh, how you can get access to further information, and also the last successful extract date. Given this is dummy data, the data is quite old but in your instance, it would be a much more recent date.

Within Qlik itself, you can then navigate a number of ways to the next tab by either clicking on sheets to get to the next report or by clicking here to the right.

Going to the first page, you can see a bit of a summary of the total number of clients and support persons that have been serviced over this reporting period, the number of attendances, the number of sessions, the number of cases, and some performance metrics around each of those metrics as well. Then you'll see some trending information around those as well to give a bit of an idea of the trend in that space. You can also get it at a monthly level. For that, you need to select a reporting period. I'll select a financial year, and that will give you a breakdown by month and by day as well. I'll remove those filters now and move to the next tab.

Once again, you can see something very similar in the top left-hand corner about attendances per month of the year. You can also do that by day of the week as well. So if you wanted to look at where there's some peaks and troughs during the week, you can see that. In this particular view, you can see that there's some additional information by exit reasons, attendances by service setting, attendances per profile, and whether an interpreter was present as well.

The organisational summary tab just provides some detailed information at an organisation outlet level and an activity level by state of the various metrics by individual clients, persons, groups, attendance, sessions and cases.

The activity report provides a view by activity and once again, it's got a breakdown of the number of clients and group clients, support peoples and sessions. But instead of doing a trend over time, it's doing a look by activity and service type.

The next tab is by service type and it shows you all the service types and the activities and the various service types and the number of sessions that have been completed.

The client trends report provides some trends around volumes of individual clients, groups and support people as well. You can do this by a reporting period or you can do this by month, but to get the month view, we need to select a financial year or reporting period. I'll remove that filter again.

Client demographics is also available on that tab. We show once again in the top here a profile by age for both individual and support persons. We can do a view by gender, Indigenous status and disability status as well.

One thing I should mention, if you wanted to drill down further, is that if you click on a particular category, the reports are all interactive and they will filter down automatically. You can see that this is quite an interactive report and that the values change depending on what I select. You can see that I've selected multiple values and the reports will update accordingly.

Those providing extended demographics will also get information around extended demographics: higher education, NDIS eligibility status, employment status, caregiver status as well. Cultural and linguistically diverse status information is also provided. There are a lot of details around that as well on one of the CALD reports, which goes into main language spoken, country of birth, and a breakdown of the volume of people that fit into that status.

Once again, the interactions here can be quite useful. If we drill down, we get a nice breakdown of everything here. We also have some detail around ancestry and migration, visa status, number of years within Australia, etc. There's also a tab around home situation, so whether they're homeless, annual income, household composition and where their income is sourced from.

This particular demographic trend report provides some trends on how this is reporting, how this is trending over a given reporting period. Once again, depending on the tab you choose, you'll get a trend on how that's changed over time.

You also have a tab for referrals, which is a referral source, the reason for seeking assistance, where they've been referred to, whether it's internal or external referral. The reason is also state-based reporting as well for outlets. Here we can see a breakdown by state of outlets and the volumes of attendances at those outlets.

And that brings us to the end of this particular report. In terms of any specific information around these reports, if you wish to download this information, you can always right click and explore further. You can download the report as data and keep the table for opening and export. You can see that the file has downloaded, which you can then use in Excel and create a pivot table or your own report.

I'll take you to another report now so you get an idea of what's happening there. This is organisational data quality. Once again, very similar structure where we have user guide at the front, but we'll just jump straight into the data health. You can see how the quality of the data has improved over time across SLK, client demographic values and client attendances. You get a breakdown by state as well. You can then dive into each of these performance – these key areas – in a bit more detail, which talks about percentage of clients with a low SLK, for example. You can get that information broken down by outlet. A trend on how that's improving or not improving, some contributing factors to low-quality SLKs in this instance, and a distribution of this across the various activities by outlet.

This is a similar sort of performance chart, but this time for demographics. In this particular case, there's more information around specific demographic data points such as main language, indigenous status, etc. We can see some further information by unidentified group clients as well.

This particular tab provides a lot more detail around the various low quality indicators for SLK. If you wish to investigate further, it gives you a list of these here and the reason for why it's come up as a low quality SLK.

Similar sort of table exists for not stated demographics and for unidentifiable clients as well. There's also some information around sessions with support people with a breakdown, shown in a table as well, so you can get further insights there.

Some other data quality issues that are picked up as well, like where a session might be recorded before somebody's date of birth. At the back, there's a definition sheet as to what each of the various things mean.

Finally, submitted data details provides information around what's been submitted. This is a more tabular report. As I mentioned earlier, there's no performance metrics as such. It's purely just a report to let you view the various data that's been submitted by the various outlets. You can see this particular one here is session information, similar format, similar structure. This is around sessions, and this is around client details. And once again at the back, there's a definition.

Thank you Tushar and Christoph, and thank you for joining the presentation today. Hopefully this is of use to providers and might be of use to people who missed the session. We'll put this on the DEX website so that it can be viewed. It may also be of use to providers in other areas.

Here's some details on how you can get further information or support around DEX. There's the DEX website and there's a picture there of what that front page looks like. Also, the DSS Data Exchange Help Desk is a place where you can log a support request and get assistance.

Thank you very much. Talk to you again.