Live DEX Training Session for Home Affairs Funded Providers June 2026

I'd like to start with an acknowledgement of country. 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 elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples today. My name is Tristan and I work for the DEX policy and operations team at the Department of Social Services. Our team oversee the technical management of DEX. We set the rules and policies about the system and use of the data. And we work to manage together with department of Home Affairs the Program Specific Guidance that outlines the DEX reporting requirements for funded programs. We don't deal directly with grantees very much. There's normally within DSS and Home Affairs there's the other areas that do that work. You can see that we have a plan for today. So it's a 90 minute session. It's a bit longer than we usually go for. And we'll go into a bit more detail. But forgive us if we stumble over bits and pieces as we try some new content that we've developed for you as a group of providers today. So we'll start with a bit of an introduction and we'll touch on privacy, consent, and deidentification. We'll be covering Brian from the Department of Home Affairs will be talking to DEX reporting requirements and we'll cover those a bit too. And we'll also have Tushar coming on to give a demonstration of how to use the click reports which is the tool that you can use to look at data to get reports from the data that you've uploaded in DEX. The way that we work is myself and Christoph from DEXpo. I'll talk to the theory and then Christoph does a demonstration of once I've talked to the sort of the theory of what we're doing, he'll then demonstrate what that looks like in DEX. So we do a bit of screen swapping and screen sharing.

So a starting point for thinking about reporting in DEX is to think about why do we do it? Why do we collect data? Data answers questions for government and providers. It can provide insights to you as providers so that you can get better at helping your clients. It can help you make your case to government and it helps government make investment decisions.

DEX was established by the Department of Social Services in 2014 as a systematic way of recording appropriate data. DSS has a thing called the Community Grants Hub and through that we offer use of decks to other departments and state governments including the department of Home Affairs. The name DEX, Data Exchange is about a two-way partnership data to be used by service providers and communities as well as by government and funders. It's used for client-f facing programs. So that's services that engage directly with clients and people and data can be entered into DEX manually through a web-based portal or it can be bulk uploaded and transferred if you have your own client records management system or database where you track what you're doing for particular people. Sometimes it's possible to link that into DEX and automate the upload of data. And there are a number of organisations that use DEX that way.

As DEX is used to collect and manage potentially sensitive information, there are several steps required to access the system. If you use the MyGov app, then you probably already have set up my ID, which is one of the requirements. My ID and RAM are both managed by the Australian Taxation Office. So while we at the at DSS and at the DEX help desk do provide some guidance and information around these any in-depth support needs to be accessed through the ATO. While digital ID is the preferred and secure way to log into DEX to discuss other options for accessing DEX you can email the DEX help desk.

So, as mentioned before, there are multiple ways to get data into DEX. The majority of data uploaded to DEX comes from larger providers who use a bulk uploading method. And this tends to reduce the need for double entry and increases your ability to tailor the way that your staff enter data. So while the majority of data does come into DEX that way, the majority of users of DEX use a manual entry method. Establishing a bulk upload method requires the existence of an in-house client records system or database which can talk to DEX and it is likely to engage or require engaging someone with technical expertise to configure your system to talk to DEX. So when we do demonstrations today, they'll be of demonstrating what manual entry of data in the DEX portal looks like.

And hopefully this is familiar. This is what the DEX landing screen looks like. And this is where you go to manually enter data. It's also where you go, you can see there's an upload files option. If you're doing bulk uploading, it's also where you would log in to upload your file. And the link at the bottom right is where you can access reports in QlikSense using your organisation's data. And Tushar will be showing us through how to use these and particularly he'll be showing the client outcomes report later in today's session.

So we're going to cross now to Christoph who's going to go through do a demonstration of some of the first steps of manual entry data in DEX.

So hopefully everyone can see the screen here. This is as Tristan mentioned the first screen that greets everyone once they have logged into the system. So there are a couple of tiles here that can be selected where you can find clients or cases. You can [clears throat] view SCORE assessment. We also have some adding functions over here. And then down here under my organisation we can move over to the manage organisation screen. You can manage your users as in the staff that have DEX user profiles. you can get reference data if you do bulk uploads and a couple of other functions here. So for today's purposes I'm just going to go over to the manage organisation screen. Now at this point, excuse [clears throat] me, I should mention that we are in what's called the staging environment. Sometimes also referred to as a sand pit. This is a copy of the real or production DEX environment. So all the functions can be utilized here. And this is also where if you choose to use one of the bulk upload methods where your in-house IT staff or the software provider that you may choose to engage [clears throat] can test their software.

Okay. So first up is some organisation details. Once again because we're in the staging environment this is all fake data but here you would have your preferred organisation name that you can manually change the source organisation name as stated on your grant agreement and some other organisations details. Then next is a list of outlets that you may have created and then a list of the program activities that you are funded for. So the first data point that we are going to discuss today are outlets. So in the DEX world an outlet is the location that an organisation delivers their services from. Now, that could be something like a head office. That could be a community center that you deliver services from. Some of those locations. The only thing that you should not list as an outlet are actual client homes. So, that would be considered a privacy breach, as it would contain someone's actual address. So, you just have to be mindful of that. Okay. So now I'm going to demonstrate how we can create an outlet.

So here we are at the add outlet screen. First off, you would have to give the outlet a name. Now these are free text fields. There are some characters like a star symbol or a dollar sign or anything like that that you cannot use. But otherwise you could name it what you would like.

So then I'm going to input some address details. So now I used a stored address here. I should mention that there is an address validation tool that's embedded in the Data Exchange. If it does not recognise the address as being one that's listed within the tool itself, you would receive a little warning. So here I'm just going to hit the save button now.

And we have this sorry we have successfully added this outlet. So anytime that you have successfully entered a data point, you get a little green tick from the system. Okay, now we've created this outlet. However, the next thing we need to do is add an activity to the outlet.

So, I've pressed that button here. Now, if your organisation is funded for a single program activity only, it would be the only one displayed here. If you are funded for more than one by pressing the little down arrow here, all of the ones that are available to be added to the outlet can be selected from. So let's add Economic Pathways first. Now the start date will always default to the start of a reporting period and the end date is always the contract end date as per your agreement. So let's hit save here.

And once again the system tells us the outlet activity has been successfully added. So now if you happen to be an organisation that is funded for two or more activities we would and you intend to deliver those activities from that outlet you can add another activity. So the first one has disappeared. The system recognises this and it will give you the remaining options.

Okay, we have another green tick and down here it now tells us that the activities delivered at this outlet are the two that we've just added. Now you may note the status currently is at ready for approval. That means that [clears throat] one of the DEX help desk staff members needs to action the request and that can take up to 10 business days. We always suggest that as you approach the end of a given reporting period that you make sure that you have any outlets approved well ahead of time because the amount of queries [snorts] that come into the DEX help desk as we approach the end of a reporting period increases dramatically and then there may be some capacity issues and your outlet may not get approved in time. Okay. So if we hit the back button here, we can now see under outlets that the second outlet has been added. And if we press this little triangle toggle here, some additional details become available. Again, it lists the activities that are to be delivered here and that it says it's ready for approval.

So that's the first sort of data connection that we're demonstrating today. Tristan, I believe at this stage I'm going to hand back to you until I demonstrate more data items shortly.

We are commonly asked about consent and collecting and storing participant data in DEX. clients names and addresses are only collected and stored on the Data Exchange when they've given consent. Such consent is voluntary and it's not linked to being eligible to use services. DSS and other funders like Home Affairs never see client names and street level addresses. Instead, a code called a Statistical Linkage Key is used when working with the data. DSS and you as users of DEX are bound by the Privacy Act of 1988, which creates clear rules about the storage and use of private information.

I mentioned the Statistical Linkage Key. So DEX data is deidentified and instead a code called a an SLK or a Statistical Linkage Key is used to group each participant's data together. SLK's in DEX allow for participants use of services to be followed over time and across service providers. So for example they would allow us to understand if a person who's used a play group as a child has had better employment outcomes as an adult later in life. without having to use that person's name or address to link their data together because that isn't available and it's not viewable to people at the government end. It's only viewable to you as the provider. The SLK uses a formula developed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and that's commonly used to deidentify data across the Australian government. You can see on the left here, the code is developed drawing on components of a participant's name, date of birth, and their nominated gender.

In thinking about consent and privacy in DEX, it's important to be aware of the difference between identified, deidentified, and unidentified clients.

On the left, this slide shows what manual entry of an identified client record looks like at your end as the provider. The client's name, date of birth, and postcode are entered and the client consents box is ticked. You can see at the bottom there, there are two tick boxes. The top one is where the client consents to their personal information being stored in DEX. The bottom one is about consenting to participate in research. So the one we're really talking about here is the top tick box. And if they do consent to having that information stored, then on the right you can see what their client record looks like. It includes their name, date of birth, gender, and client ID. A deidentified client is what happens when a client is set up in DEX but consent is not given to keep their name or street-level address in the system. Details are first entered for the purpose of creating the SLK. Then, when the consent box is not ticked, the record is deidentified. So you can see here the name fields have been grayed out at the top. What happens is you put the name in and then move forward without ticking the box; the name is removed, the SLK has been generated, and on the right you can see what the client record looks like going forward. So that's what a deidentified client record looks like at your end: the name is removed. It's important that you keep a record of the client ID number that applies for each participant because that's how you'll need to search for them in future. And this is what an unidentified client looks like. It's where a person is just recorded as a number in a group. No further information is entered in DEX about them. So for people entered in that way, we don't know if they come back and use different services over time or if they've attended the same group multiple times; they're just a number. There's no further information to distinguish individuals in the group.

So to recap, DSS and Home Affairs never see personal information for any client. Identified and deidentified client records provide the strongest data that can be used in a variety of ways to understand impact of services. Providers can only see personal information like a client's name in an identified record. For deidentified participants, it's important to keep a record of the client ID number for each participant so that you can bring their record up when you need to in future.

We're going to have a quick talk about the DEX Protocols. It's a key document available on the DEX website that lays out the rules of DEX. This slide highlights some key points about client-level data requirements. On the top left is information on privacy requirements from the DEX Protocols. Personal data is only stored in DEX if an organisation wants these details available for its own use. If you want this information to be available, then you have to seek and record consent as outlined in the DEX Protocols. If you don't want to record names and street-level address details, they are initially entered for the purpose of creating an SLK and then removed by not checking the consent for DSS to collect box. In that process, if consent is not given, you never need to enter the street-level address; just the name is entered and then removed when you move forward without indicating consent, and the SLK can be created.

We saw in the previous slides how client records looked at the provider end. This slide shows the kind of data that funders are interested in information about groups of programs or services over time uh not so much details of individuals. This slide gives a good sense of how DEX has been used to date with records of about 70 million attendances by 15 million clients and support people over a decade.

We're now just going to look briefly Brian will be going into further detail a bit later. but have a quick look at the requirements the reporting requirements for each program against the available fields in DEX. So this chart shows all of the fields that can be reported in DEX. On the left hand column you have items that are mandatory for all programs for most clients. And that's pretty much every program that reports in DEX reports those things. The middle two columns are things where the that some programs or some funders make mandatory. And this shows highlighted the items that are required for SETS. And then across on the right looking at outcomes data or SCORE standard community sorry standard client community outcomes reporting tool for SETS that a SCORE data needs to be recorded for 50 to 60% of clients. And then looking at EPRI you can see it's a little bit different. So everything on the left is mandatory. Highlighted items in the middle are mandatory and then SCORE data is required for 95% of clients and then for YTS items on the left are mandatory nothing in the middle is mandatory and then across on the right the SCORE is required for a majority of YTS clients I mean one thing that's worth mentioning is all of those extended data items if you wish to record them for your own use as an organisation you can still collect them. They're not turned off in the system and they're something you can opt to use if they be of you know use to you for your own purposes.

We're now going to head over to Christoph who's going to give a live demonstration.

Okay, we are still at the manage organisation screen. On the right-hand side we can see the ‘I want to…’ box. These are hyperlinks to get you to the functions of where you would like to go within the system. So, let's add a client into the system now.

I should have mentioned earlier that any fields that have the red asterisk are mandatory fields. I mentioned earlier, when we added an outlet, that there are certain free-text fields. Now, with client IDs, case IDs, and session IDs, it is especially important that you never include any client-identifying information. So you would not use a person's first name, pseudonym, or last name as part of the ID, for example. If you choose not to add an ID of your own, the system will assign a numerical value starting with, I think, triple01 and then triple02 and so forth. Or you can add an ID of your choosing.

So, I've obviously misspelled something there. So we're going to add a client first who has consented.

So we add the first name, we add the family name, we choose a date of birth

and then we assign a gender value.

And as we can see down here, the consent boxes are pre-ticked. So we're just going to leave that as is. Now, you can also add a tag. For example, if you know that this particular person will only be seeing you for one of the activities that you're funded for, you may want to give that person a tag like SETS client or EPRI client. I'm just going to leave this field blank for today. Let's go to the next page. So now here we can see the residential address details that need to be added. As you can see here, suburb, state, and postcode are the mandatory fields. But you can always opt to put the street-level address in there as well. I'm going to leave this one blank and just type in a selection. You may remember I mentioned we have an address validation tool. So if you input, like I have here, a suburb name, it will give you all the available options in all states for that particular suburb. Let's select this one and then hit the next screen again. Okay, now it's time to add some demographic details. So, country of birth. There is a list here of all the countries that are currently recognised by the Australian Government. You can either manually try to navigate to the given country or start typing the first few letters of the country and then the system will navigate to that option that it recognises.

Now, I apologise in advance. I realise that a lot of the time, the clients for the programs you are delivering services for are not born in Australia. We can change that for the next client. So the system asks whether the client is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin. There are some options. I've selected no. The next question is whether the client has one or more of the following impairments, conditions, or disabilities. For demonstration purposes, I'm just going to select none here. And then we go to the next page. So here we have a review page. If you realise that you've made a mistake with the data input so far, you can go back and edit that, or you can submit the client into the system.
Okay. Now here we have the extended demographics page. Now for your programs that you are delivering for the department of Home Affairs there are some additional items that you need to collect. So what I've got up here is the Program Specific Guidance document. Now this one is for Economic Pathways to Refugee Integration or EPRI as we've been referring to it. As we scroll down in this document, it gives us a list of the areas of SCORE that are relevant. We'll get to that a little bit later. And then further down, it also tells us about the extended data items that you are expected to collect. So here at the client level data, these are some of the additional data items that you need to enter. So, as we go back to this extended demographic field, I'm just going to pop this over here for myself so I know what I need to enter. You are required to enter the employment status. So, once again, you click the down arrow and these are the options that can be selected. So, let's say we're going to select unemployed, not working but looking for work for this value here. Next we want income details main source of income.

So we can select this one for example. Highest level of education is also one that we want which was just above that. So let's say this person told you that they have a secondary education.
The first year of arrival in Australia. Now we can make a selection here. So let's say this person arrived in 2024 and that was in March of that year. The visa type needs to be selected. So here we can make the selections that are available. I'm just going to select ‘other’ here. And ancestry is also a required field. So I mean this this combination of data won't make sense but let's say this person arrived or has told you that the ancestry lies in Papua New Guinea. So now we go to the ‘save’ and ‘next’ and we once again have a green tick box there. So all these details for this client have now been entered. Now if we click the hyperlink of the client ID, this is what that looks like. It's very similar to the slide that Tristan demonstrated earlier. Now the important bit is that because you have indicated this client has consented to have their first name stored in the DEX system you will be able to see this name. Again no one at government will ever see the person's first or last name in any manner whatsoever. But now let's add a client that has not consented to demonstrate the differences there.

Okay. So, let's say this person is named Steven.
And Steven was born on this day.
And he told you he identifies as a man or male, but he says, "I would prefer not to have my name and address level, street level address details stored here." So, what we do then is we untick this box. And what I'd like you to do is pay particular attention to uh the given name and family name field just before I hit the next button. These will be grayed out.
So, what we do then is we untick this box. And what I'd like you to do is pay particular attention to the given name and family name field just before I hit the next button. These will be grayed out.
Now you saw that they were grayed out.

Now I obviously have been a bit repetitive here and used these details before. So the system actually alerts us to the fact that there is a matching client.

So let's go back. We'll tick this box again. And I'm just going to change this slightly. Apologies for that.

Let's change the person's name to this. And we'll repeat this step here. Once again, this will be blanked out. But what it does, what the system does as you hit the next button, it quickly creates the Statistical Linkage Key. And that's why it's always important that you enter these details if the client has given them to you. Okay, that's a bit better. We can ignore that one at the bottom. We'll go to continue adding client.

Okay, it does not like it because we have not consented in there. Let's change that. Apologies. We'll edit that in the video later.

Okay, let's do this next button. And we have a winner. Fantastic.

Okay, I'm going to select this suburb here in the ACT,

and let's hit next. So, I'm just going to make some random selections here.

Just to speed this process up a little bit.

Apologies, the review page looks good. We'll submit that client in and we make the selections as per the program specific guidance.

So let's just make some selections here.

And we'll save and add. We've successfully added this client now. You can see here already that the first name and last name are not displaying. And if we press the hyperlink, this is what it looks like now. Because the client did not consent, the name is hidden. So this is why it's always important that you choose a client ID for clients who have not consented that makes sense to you. That way, if this person returns for multiple instances of service delivery, you'll know which record matches the person you entered earlier.
Okay. So that that kind of concludes the client data entries. The next thing that we want to do now is add a case.
So with DEX, the term ‘case’ means that it is simply a function we can use to group clients together or at least place a single client into. It is completely up to each organisation how they would like to handle their cases. As I mentioned, you could make it a single case for one client and record all of the service delivery you have given to that client in that single case, or some organisations may choose to place, let's say, five or 10 clients into a given case and then record the same type of service delivery in that particular case. So that's a way of grouping, and the option is there for you to choose how you use cases in that sense. Okay. So let's call this one ‘Individual 1’. Now you need to link this case to an outlet first and then you need to link it to a particular program activity. So let's say this is a set case.

Now at this stage I'm just going to refer back to the Program Specific Guidance and see if there are any case level data that are important for SETS. So here's the SETS PSG and as I scroll down I can see at the case level we need to enter the reason for seeking assistance and a referral source.

Okay. So now because we're only going to place a singular client into this case here, we're going to leave the total number of unidentified clients associated with case at zero. So let's hit the next button.

So the next function we need to do is add clients to the case. So let's say we're going to enter Jenna who we created earlier to this case. So, I've ticked the little box on the left hand side of all the available clients that we've got entered here. And now we're going to attach the client.

It has now changed it to down here telling us these are the clients that are attached. And now we hit next.

We've landed on another review page. I'm happy with what I've entered. I'm going to submit. Fantastic. So now we can see here the case ID hyperlink and the clients attached to the case.

So at the case level we now have to enter reasons for seeking assistance and a referral source code. So let's press the button here. Here we have the referral source and reasons, and as we hover the mouse over this little symbol we can add the referral. So now the first selection is the referral source. These are the available options, so you would just select the most appropriate one. Let's say it is from a community services agency, and then you can tick the reasons for seeking assistance. As you make the first selection, let's say it's financial resilience, it will select this one as the primary reason, and then any other selections that you choose to add become secondary. Now, if you've made a mistake, we can always change that and make it the one you want. The selections are changeable, is what I'm trying to get to. Down at the bottom here, we also have a reason for the client leaving this case, but because we are only placing this client into the case right now, we would not necessarily make a selection for that. Let's hit the save button. As we scroll down now, we can see that little symbol has filled in, which means there's something we've entered there. We can press the triangle toggle and then there's a summary of what we've just entered. Over here we have an edit button. If we notice that we've done something incorrectly, we can choose to edit that. Or if it's not for this particular client, then we can delete this as well. Okay. Down here the system tells us that there are no sessions associated with this case so far. So let's add a session for this particular case-client combination.
Now again I mentioned earlier the free text fields can be entered with something that you've nominated that makes sense to you or you can leave it blank and it a numerical values attached to it. Now here I'm going to use the calendar pick date function. As you can see you cannot select a date in the future. That only makes sense. And then as you scroll back through the months you cannot enter any data any session data for a previous reporting period either.
So let's say this person came to your place of business early in the year on the 5th of January. So next we would make a service type selection. Now I should have mentioned I apologise I'm only doing this now. The definition of a session within the Data Exchange is the occurrence of an instance of service delivery. Now, a service type that's linked to a session is a description that matches most closely the type of service that you have delivered to this client. Now for each program activity, these are unique to each program activity and you can only select from those that are listed in the Program Specific Guidance for a given program activity.

So now this person presents for the first time. So here you might want to choose intake and assessment. So that's what I'm going to do.

I'm just going to go back to the Program Specific Guidance and see what else we need to add later. So, at the session level, we need to have a referral type and purpose added. That's good to know. We'll get to that shortly. So, now you can select service setting and you can select if an interpreter was present or not. However, these are not fields that are listed in the PSG. So, I'm just going to leave these blank. I'm now going to attach the person who attended the session and select them. And then I'm going to hit the next button. Here we have another review page. So, let's submit this one in.

And there it is. And it's finished.

So if I press the session details hyperlink, we can see that there are two additional data points that we can enter. So we know we're going to address SCORE a little bit later. But here we're just going to make a selection for referral.

So these are referrals to other services. So let's have a look at the referral types first. Now internal and external. So if for example you deliver other services within your own organisation, you would select internal. Of course if you know a community partner that may be able to assist Jenna in a way that you cannot, you may select external. So let's pretend that we're doing this here. And then we make a choice for the purpose. So let's say it's education and skills training. Let's save that into the system. We can see now that that's been filled in. And once again, we have a look at the toggle. And here are the selections displayed that we've just entered.

Okay. I'm going to add a second case into the system now.

So, this time around, we're going to add a case, and we're going to call this a ‘weekly women's group’.

And again, we need to link that to an outlet and then to a program activity.

And once again, we know the persons that we've entered as individual clients and this is not a group activity where unidentified clients are present. So, we can hit the next button. Okay. The system seems to have caught up with itself. So I've continued with adding the women's weekly group case. So here I'm just going to select a few of the clients

and I'm going to attach these clients to the case. The system tells us about the selections we've made. We hit next and we submit the case and we've reached the finish stage. So now we can have a look at the case in detail.

Now again we've already covered the referral. So in the name of efficiency I'm not going to add the referral to each of these clients. But this is something that would be expected of you to do. We're just going to progress to adding a session.

Now again, I make a date selection first. Let's say this happened on the 2nd of March. And the service type selection. So let's say this was an instance of domestic and family violent support. Let's make that selection there. and we hit the next button. now this adds to the scenario that I alluded to earlier. a session can be linked to a singular client in a case or in this instance because it's a weekly meeting group you can select all of the persons that are in the case which is a way of saving some admin time instead of having to need needing to add the session to each person individually. it can be added for all the clients that are in this particular case.

So that's now been added.

And here we can see the clients who attended the session. If we go to the session hyperlink, it also displays it like this with the details that you've entered. Okay. So now I'm going to add one final case.

So for this case we're going to call it ‘community expo meeting’.

And here we are now going to indicate that this session that's going to be placed into this case had a mix of identified clients and unidentified clients. So as this was a community expo event. Let's change that instead of meeting to event.

So this may have been at a you know a town fair or something like that. And you looked at your Program Specific Guidance to see the total percentage of unidentified clients that you are supposed to record. What we can do is we can make a numerical selection here and you can say okay so 10 persons that were just casual one-time attendees they did not want to give us any of their details attended. We add that to the case here. What we do then is we add some known individuals that turned up as well

and we attach those clients to the case. We hit the next button. The case details review page appears. We hit the submit button

and the details are here. So the total number of unidentified clients is 10 and three persons that are known to the organisations have attended as well. So we're going to add a session to this case now too.

Let's say it happened then.

And it was an instance of community engagement. Now here you need to indicate the number of the unidentified clients that attended the session. So when we added that number to the case level that was the maximum amount of clients that can attend sessions in that case. And here you can make a selection that needs to be either the maximum number or less than the number you indicated at the case level.

And we're going to say that these three persons attended the session as well. We have the review page again. We're going to submit it in. And then as we look at the session ID, the details tell us these three persons attended. The 10 unidentified clients attended as well. And those were the three examples that I thought are worth demonstrating to you. So at this stage I'm just going to hand back to Tristan once more and Tristan's going to speak a little bit to SCORE and I will then demonstrate how we enter SCORE into the system after that.

Okay. So we're talking now about SCORE, the Standard Client/Community Outcomes Reporting tool.

So when we talk about outcomes, it helps to think about what inputs, outputs, and outcomes all are. And we use an example of a vaccination program to help explain. So thinking about a vaccination program for children the inputs are a health worker's time the vaccination itself the output is the numbers of kids and proportion of kids that get vaccinated and the outcome is the reduction in the rate of infection. So thinking about a funded program the input might be money and staff and workers. The output might be sessions delivered and activities delivered with the participants and the outcome is the change that government is trying to achieve and you as service providers are trying to achieve in delivering that program.
For providers, like all data, SCORE can be a useful tool that demonstrates what outcomes you're achieving from your work. In addition to stats like the money that you've spent or the amount of time and number of sessions, it's a tool that's designed to help demonstrate change.

These are the SCORE domains. The domains to be used for a program are specified, and we saw Christoph showing us the program specific guidance, and there's a couple of links in the chat. So the detail of which domains are required for which program is there in the PSG. When talking about SCORE, we're mostly thinking about the two domains on the left: circumstances and goals. Satisfaction is recorded towards the end of an engagement with a service, and community SCORE is recorded at group or community sessions where it's not feasible to record changes for individual clients. So most of the time we're thinking about circumstances and goal domains.
These are some examples of wording against the domain. SCORE wording is specified in the DEX Protocols. Thinking about the purpose of SCORE wording: if I work with a client and you work with the same client, my view on whether things have progressed for them might be quite different to yours depending on the background or values we bring to that judgment. So SCORE is a tool that's designed to try to make that more standard. Within services, workers may come and go over time, and again SCORE provides a framework to try to make a more consistent judgment on what changes have been achieved over time. So that's the purpose of these wordings. They are words to reflect on when allocating a ranking on a five-point scale. Another important thing to be aware of is the options for who can complete SCORE. Ideally, the client themselves could look at the questions and decide where they're at in terms of ranking against those domains. Sometimes that's not practical or appropriate. So a practitioner can also do that. The person that works with the client can make that judgment. It could be a combination: the client and the practitioner could have a conversation and make the judgment together, or it could be a carer. So there are various ways that SCORE ranking can be determined. In this slide we can also see alternative wording that's available on the DEX website in a resource called How to use SCORE with clients. We will be sharing the slides with people who've attended today. We'll send an email with a copy of the slides, and there are links in the presentation that can take you to these resources. Equally, you could just go to the DEX website and look up How to use SCORE with clients. This slide shows two examples of wording. We're using the community participation and networks domain, which is a circumstances domain. And if you look down the side, we're showing what the question wording is for SCOREs of one, three, and five. So SCORE is a Likert scale from one to five, with one being not doing so well and five being doing really well. Looking at the community participation and networks domain in the DEX Protocols, the more academic wording that's listed there is: for a SCORE of one, significant negative impact of poor community participation and networks on independence, participation, and wellbeing. In How to use SCORE with clients, the more accessible wording that's suggested is: I feel very isolated. I have very little contact with friends, family, or people in the community. I have no support. For a SCORE of three, the middle ranking from the Protocols is progress towards improving community participation and networks to support independence, participation, and wellbeing, or in more accessible language: I feel somewhat connected. I have some contact with friends, family, or people in the community. I have some support. So for every domain there are suggested words, and there are the DEX Protocols version and the How to use SCORE with clients version. It's also worth knowing that you have the option of using an alternative validated tool to determine SCORE rankings. There are plenty of providers that use another kind of tool, and there's guidance around how to do that. If you look on the DEX website, you need to look up the SCORE translation matrix, and it provides guidance on how to use other tools to determine the appropriate rankings against the domains.

So SCORE is a ranking against the same domains over time. And it's important that what we're looking for is a change in the SCORE over time. So it's important that a SCORE rating is determined by comparing ratings given at different points in time. We call them an initial SCORE and a subsequent SCORE or a before and an after. It should be at least towards the beginning of someone's involvement in a service and towards the end. But if people are involved, you know, in an ongoing way then ideally every six months.
Earlier we talked about the requirements for each program, including what proportion of participants need to be getting SCOREs, and we will be going back to Brian shortly, who will recap on that. This is an example of how a non-government organisation has used its own SCORE data in an evaluation. It was an employment-based program, and you can see that they have been ranking the change in their SCOREs against employment behaviour, knowledge, and skills. For participants in that program, looking at employment, a bit more than 60% stayed the same in their employment status. A few got better, and some got worse in that program. And that's the reality. Another question we sometimes get is: what if things get worse? Well, as good as our programs might be, there are a lot of things that go on in people's lives that we don't have influence over. The reality might be that sometimes things get worse for people rather than better. SCORE is important to capture setbacks as well as improvement. So that's what it's there for. You can see that for behaviour, participants in this program — things like turning up to work on time, taking direction, or seeking help — quite a lot had improved SCOREs there or stayed the same; not many got worse. So that's an example of how before-and-after SCORE, that change in SCORE, is used or can be used. So I think Brian should be able to talk to us. 
Have we got you there, Brian? 
Hi everyone. Yeah, these are specific to our programs. So first of all, SETS, the Settlement Engagement and Transition Support program. Participation in the Partnership Approach is mandatory for SETS. All providers are required to participate, including recording client outcomes through SCORE as well as extended demographic data. SCORE data is required for 50 to 60% of all SETS participants, collected at least twice for each client: once towards the beginning of service delivery, and once towards the end. You may do additional ones as well. SCORE outcomes include circumstances, goals, satisfaction, and community. As you see the next few slides, you'll see there is some variation between programs. In terms of unidentified clients, 25% or less of your clients should be recorded as unidentified clients in each reporting period. The extended data for SETS includes, in terms of the client level, month of first arrival in Australia, year of first arrival, visa type, and ancestry; for case-level data, reason for seeking assistance and referral source; and for session-level data, referral type and referral purpose.

And this for our Economic Pathways to Refugee Integration program. Participation in the Partnership Approach is also mandatory. So including SCORE reporting and extended data. Collection of SCORE outcomes data is required for at least 95% of EPRI participants. And you'll see that that's significantly higher for SETS. And the reason for that is that EPRI is a pilot program that's just recently been stood up and we need to collect additional data to monitor the success of the pilot and inform future decisions. So data should be collected near the beginning of the client service delivery approximately every 6 months throughout the service delivery where support is provided for longer than 6 months and towards the end of service delivery and for EPRI SCORE outcomes are required for the circumstances goals and satisfaction. unidentified clients should be no more than 5% of EPRI clients. Extended data for EPRI includes at the client level, employment status, high level of education or qualification, household composition, income, main source of income and first arrival in Australia, visa and ancestry. As you'll see, there's some differences there from SETS. Obviously, as an employment program, we need more employment related data. session level data we need our referral type and purpose interpreter present and service setting and for case level data attendance profile referral insource and reason and exit reason.
And for the Youth Transition Support program, participation in the Partnership Approach is strongly encouraged by submitting additional data in return for access to extra reports and this includes ability to record the extended data set. that's and information on that is in the DEX Protocols at section 6 and 11. Collection of SCORE outcomes data for YTS. So YTS providers are able to record outcomes data through SCORE at least twice for each clients towards the beginning and once again at the end. And where practical can also record SCORE assessments periodically throughout delivery in the circumstances, goals, satisfaction and community. And no more than 20% of clients should be unidentified in each reporting period. Organisations should set up cases to reflect the four pillars of the YTS program as well as casework. And the four pillars are focused around education, employment, vocational support, sports, and casework.
So, this is just a slide on how the Department of Home Affairs uses DEX data. We use it to better understand client pathways, services accessed, and what levels of service lead to the best outcomes. We check that eligible clients are serviced and monitor priority groups and demographics. We demonstrate the return on government investment and help determine future investment and inform policy development, service delivery, and program policy. It's used to conduct and inform independent program evaluations. It's important that DEX data for every provider is of high quality, with accurate and comprehensive data entered. Tristan's put the link for a whole range of supporting documents in the chat there, but the Program Specific Guidance for Home Affairs provides the specific requirements for SETS, EPRI, and YTS. It aims to provide consistency in how the program data is interpreted within each of the programs and provides tailored and practical information on data reporting expected for those programs, and assists organisations in integrating SCORE outcomes data collection into their existing service and admin practices. So, the links there again are for the Home Affairs program specific guidance. Thanks, Tristan. 
No worries. We have talked through a lot there. We started with the theory of SCORE, and then Brian has done a recap about what the SCORE reporting obligations are for each of the Home Affairs programs that report in DEX. We're now going to cross back to Christoph to see what manual entry of SCORE looks like when you do it in DEX. 
Everyone can see that? Excellent. Okay. So, now SCORE, as we've just discussed, has four types: circumstances, goals, satisfaction, and community. The first three are listed against individuals who have attended a session. Community SCORE is linked to a group of clients that can be used mainly to SCORE against unidentified clients, and that's linked at the session level. However, what we're going to focus on is the SCORE requirements for an individual. Down here — sorry, I should scroll a tiny bit further up — we are on the session details page here, and we're going to enter a SCORE for Katarina. We do that by hovering the mouse over this little client SCOREs symbol. And now we go to the Add client SCORE page. Here we make the choice of the SCORE type that we want to enter. Let's select circumstances.

Now there are assessed by options that can be entered as well but they do not have to. So we can select the show domains button. Now all the available domain options for a given SCORE type are displayed in the system. What you would probably want to do is go back to the Program Specific Guidance for the program that you are delivering to confirm the SCORE domains that you are required to enter. So here we can see ‘age appropriate development’ and so forth are the requirements. I'm just going to pop that over to the other side of my screen so I can make the correct selections. What I should also demonstrate quickly is there's a definitions for each circumstance that's embedded into the system. Now, this is the academic language that Tristan had referred to earlier. so for example for ‘age appropriate development’ if we toggle the triangle it will say for SCORE one significant negative impact of poor ‘age appropriate development on independence participation and well-being’.
Now if I go to the how to use SCORE with clients task cardart, we have the more conversational equivalent of what that ‘age appropriate’ development SCORE of one reads like. So compared to other people the same age, I struggle to master the skills or knowledge they seem to know. and I'm not learning more. So, this is a a pretty handy document that can be found on our website how to use school with clients. It is formatted in such a way that you can print this off and you have little tick boxes. So, you could use it as the actual survey that you can give to your clients. So, let's go back to this now. Here, we're going to close this off. So let's say for’ age appropriate development’ Katarina says I'm not super confident so we would enter a one here. So community participation networks Katarina might rate herself as a two. Education and skills training that's what she turned up for at your organisation. That's what she seeks. So naturally, she might think that that's not a very high rating there. So for employment, Katarina may be working a casual job. So she may rate herself at the lower end for that as well. Family function is non-existent. So lower end again. Financial resilience is also at the lower end there. And then for housing, we can also make a selection of one. So now that we've made these selections, we can save this into the system.

And then we have the client SCORE green tick box. And now you can see here the symbol has filled in which means that we have a SCORE that's been entered against this client. And once again we use the triangle toggle to view the details.

and they can be edited of course or deleted if you recognise that you have entered this SCORE against the incorrect client.

Okay. Well, this is pretty much the conclusion of the system demonstration that I typically do here. So what I might do at this stage is hand over to our colleague Tushar who will show what the click reports look like. Over to you Tushar. 
So the first thing I wanted to show you was a sample report and this this is just the homepage of a organisation overview report and it uses synthetic data. So keeps doesn't show any sensitive data at all but great for a demonstration like this. So on a particular report like this, you can see we've got some KPIs showing client the number of client and support persons for a specific reporting period, the number of attendances, the number of sessions, the number of cases and a few other KPIs like that. I should jump back a step here and talk about the filters. So you can actually choose the filters that you want to select on the report on the page here and they're grouped by the appropriate category. So you can do that before you jump in. That will help speed up the report.
One of the things I wanted to go through here is that at the bottom of this specific report, you can see that there's a stacked bar chart. It's a combo chart with some dots and a stacked bar chart as well. But one of the things that you'll see and it's a click formatting thing where you can see these things got reporting period, month and day. These are like tabs to the report. So in this particular instance you can see the data based on reporting periods. So in the case of this it's every six months. You can see a monthly view. And for this I need to select the financial year. So it's telling me what to do. I better do that. I don't want to upset click. And here you can see we've got a monthly view now for this financial year that I've selected. And if you go back to the previous tab, it's only choosing the financial year that I've selected. So it applies throughout the report. And then you can also get a daily view for that financial year too. And this will scroll for quite a number of instances here. Now this this might be useful and you may want to use this data in your own reporting program or Excel where you might want to do some analysis offline. And this could be any data not just this particular chart. So to do that you can right click on the chart click on the combo chart option and then there's a view data option. What it does is it converts that chart into a table
One of the things I wanted to go through here is that at the bottom of this specific report, you can see that there's a stacked bar chart. It's a combo chart with some dots and a stacked bar chart as well. But one of the things that you'll see and it's a click formatting thing where you can see these things got reporting period, month and day. These are like tabs to the report. So in this particular instance you can see um the data based on reporting periods. So in the case of this it's every six months. You can see a monthly view. And for this I need to select the financial year. So it's telling me what to do. So I better do that. I don't want to upset Qlik. And here you can see we've got a monthly view now for this financial year that I've selected. And if you go back to the previous tab, it's only choosing the financial year that I've selected. So it applies throughout the report. And then you can also get a daily view for that financial year too. And this will scroll for quite a number of instances here. Now this this might be useful and you may want to use this data in your own reporting program or Excel where you might want to do some analysis offline. And this could be any data not just this particular chart. So to do that you can right click on the chart click on the combo chart option and then there's a view data option. What it does is it converts that chart into a table

and in if you right click again click on combo chart and click on data you it actually downloads the data and you can see there's a popup that says here click to download your data file. So, I'll click on that and that will go down into my downloads folder. I can open the file. It's gone into Excel, which is on my other screen. Bring it back here. Oops. Gone back. And you can see that it's downloaded into a table as you see on the screen that you can then use in Excel or import into your own reporting program, whatever you wish to do with it. I'm just going to close that down and close that. Now, you might think, well, you can't break click, so don't worry. Now, we're here. But what you can do is you can right click, click on combo chart, and you can go back to view chart. So, what this will allow me to do is, you know, I'm sick of look looking at the table. I want to look at the chart again. And I just go back to the chart view. And that allows me to go back to the chart view. Now, you might really like this particular visualisation. and you think, "Oh, look, this would be great to add to a slide pack that I'm putting together for something that I'm doing internally." So, rather than taking a screenshot or anything like that, you can actually right click, click on combo chart and you can download as and in this case we want to download it as an image, but you can obviously download as data or as a PDF, but in this case, we'll download it as an image. We'll select it in the default format as a PNG file which is a type of image format. We will export it.

Taking a moment.

Taking a longer moment.

It does do this sometimes, doesn't it, Chris? Tushar, it sometimes takes a while to load. Yeah, I'm going to try again. That's unusual. Let's download the image, but it's probably getting stage fright. So, let's see how we go again.

There you go. It's done that now a little bit quicker. So now it's, you click on the hyperlink here. It will download that as an image file. I'll open it so you can see that. And it's gone to a totally different screen which I'll drag across. And here you've got it as a PNG file. So this is something you can insert into a word document or a PowerPoint slide depending on what you need it for. and it's ready to go.

I also said I was going to talk about the client outcomes report specifically. So, the client outcomes report provides a comprehensive view overview of the SCORE results submitted by each organisation. It highlights the outcomes being achieved, the average change between the earliest and most recent SCORE assessments, and the extent of improvement or decline over time. The report also examines how outcomes vary across different program activities and service outlets, helping you to identify trends, compare performance, and better understand where clients are experiencing the strongest progress or where additional support may be needed. This I'll take you to the like the other chart there is a filters page where you can select your filters. Once again, this is using synthetic data. 
So there's nothing sensitive on here. But the first main visualisation sheet or sheet that we call in click is the overview sheet and for the selected reporting period that we have the overview tab provides the number of and percentage of clients with sessions and their trends. So you can see that here and we can see that here. It also shows the number of clients fully and partially assessed and it also shows positive outcomes for SCOREs across client circumstance, goals and satisfaction domains and their trends. So you can see that here and you can see the trends there.

Now the next nine chart the nine next nine tabs are split by their outcome types. So I'm only going to look at the circumstance outcome types but they it is repeated for the others as well. But for each of these outcome types, it describes the percentage of clients reporting positive, neutral, and negative results and their long-term trends. You can see that here the average change in the SCORE from the earliest to latest with a supporting trend. So that's the average and that's the trend. and the number of paired clients and paired domains. A session pairing occurs when an organisation measures and records at least two assessments for the same domain within the same session.

Just go to the next one.

So in in addition to reporting the percentage of clients reporting positive, neutral or negative results it also shows the number of clients with paired circumstance SCOREs by domain. So all of these here, it has a heat map to the in the top right relating the percentage of clients with an overall positive outcome, which is down the bottom here, versus the change that was experienced, which is going vertically. And there's a summary table at the bottom that describes a number of clients assessed, number of paired domains, clients with a overall positive outcome, and a percentage of with an overall positive, neutral, or negative outcome.

And the third worksheet in the trilogy is the client demographics. And what this does is for each SCORE domain provides a breakdown using a combination of age group profile, gender, cold status, disability status or indigenous status. And what it's doing is representing this is in a complex combination chart where it talks about the percentage of clients with an overall positive circumstance SCORE or domain SCORE, neutral or negative SCORE. It talks about the percentage of clients assessed and also the number of sessions.

And this once again is a repeat for the for goals and circumstance. I'll just hop along to the end.

So this is the SCORE details tab or the sheet and the top of the sheet shows the number of clients with sessions. The number of clients assessed, partially assessed or not assessed and what percentage that is of the clients.

So a full SCORE assessment is when an initial SCORE and at least one subsequent SCORE is recorded for the same client for the same program activity and the relevant domain. A link is then established between those assessment and is possible to measure the shift between them. A partial SCORE assessment means that a client has received a SCORE but only one and a subsequent SCORE has not yet been recorded for them. In this instance, they are considered partially assessed. There is not yet the ability to measure the shift or change between the SCOREs.

Now here the SCORE detail sheet shows the client type, the lead organisation, the delivery organisation, the activity, the sessions, the last session date, the last assessment date, paired and unpaired circumstances, goals and satisfaction domains, and an assessment flag. In the table itself, a row in blue shows that the client is assessed. Light blue shows partially assessed and purple will show not assessed.

So here, one of the things you can see is you can actually drill down to a specific DEX client. So you can actually click on a specific item here. For example, we'll choose something with a reasonable number 11. Here we'll click tick if we like and that will filter it across the whole report. And here you can see the purple has appeared which is showing that it's not assessed. But here are the… it's found 16 paired SCOREs and this is the detail behind it. Now what after doing that you can then jump back into the front of the report and explore that in a little bit more detail. 
And you can see any changes in time. And in this obviously the data that I've chosen doesn't have more than multiple reporting periods assessed. So maybe we choose another one.

See if this one gives us something more interesting to look at.

Oh yes, bit of bouncing around going on here. But yeah, you can see this is the average SCORE for the per paired circumstance domains for that specific client ID.

Once again, this is dummy data, but this is just an idea of how the report works.

And finally, if I take you back to the SCORE details sheet, there are notes at the bottom of the sheet which provide specific considerations when interpreting the data within the report. So just take those into account when you start before you start diving in further. 
But that's all I was going to cover. 
We've done our best to answer and thanks. I look, we've done our best to answer questions in the chat. Hopefully we've got to most of them. It is always possible to contact the DEX Helpdesk with other questions, particularly if they're of a technical nature. Now I'll just have got a couple of final slides and yeah apologies for running over time. It's the first time we've run this a session of this length. So we're just learning about timing as we go. These are some key resources that we referred to. I think we have probably posted most of them in the chat but just to highlight them. The SCORE translation matrix is the resource that we you can look at to learn about using alternative validated tools to achieve the one to five SCORE against your domains. How to use SCORE with clients gives guidance about using SCORE and alternative accessible well more you know planer less academic wording. Tushar has done three excellent videos about using the reports that are available to you. He's going to do we're working on one that focuses on the outcomes report. So, you've seen the first preview of it today. But we will we're aiming to publish one focusing on the outcomes report soon, but there are three other videos there about the reports you can use to look at your data. The DEX Protocols and PSG I think we've talked about quite a bit today. And if you're completely new to DEX, the quick start guide is a really good place to start. And for more information, the Data Exchange website and, for help, the Data Exchange help desk are both key resources. I hope the training's been useful to you today. Thank you for your time. Apologies for running a bit over time. And have a good rest of your day.