So first of all, thank you for making the time to come to today's session. It's a session that is targeted directly at people who are supporting, people with a disability directly, you're the people out there that have relationships and contacts with the people that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is all about. So thank you for making the time. I appreciate that many of you have come in your own free time, so that's a real show of your commitment to find out about this scheme and how you can assist the people you work with to know that it's coming and how to be prepared for it. Before we start, I'm Sarah King. I'm from the ACT NDIS Task Force. I'm joined by Judith Davis Lee, who is a director with the National Disability Insurance Agency and the agency is the entity that will be running, managing, delivering the National Disability Scheme in Australia, in ACT from one July this year, as it is throughout Australia. Before we start, I would just like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land we're meeting on today, the Ngunnawal people, pay my respects to their elders and leaders past and present and acknowledge and welcome any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders colleagues who are here today. So I'd also like to thank the Disability Learning and Professional Development Network for putting on these sessions. There will be more sessions across the ACT for workers to find out about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is one of many more to come. I'd just like to say before we start, the reason it's so important that we have sessions for direct workers is that you are really the face of the service system. You are the people with whom people with a disability rely for information, not just support and services, but for information and probably for a sense of optimism and confidence about what's coming. There has never been a larger, more significant change to the human service system in Australia. It's a monumental change and there will be challenges, trials, tribulations through that journey. But it is, as you'll hear from Judith, one of the most important changes in order to ensure that people with a disability can lead good lives. At the end of the session, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions. If I could just ask you to check your telephones before we start, make sure they're switched off or on silent. And I'd just like to hand over to Judith Davis Lee now. Thank you. Hello everybody. It's lovely to see a full room of people, which means people's interest in what I'm going to talk to you today about is high. So thank you very much for coming. I really appreciate it. As Sarah said, I've been with the National Disability Insurance Agency for almost two years. So I joined them in June 2012 when it wasn't called the agency yet. It had a much longer name. I think it was the National Disability Insurance Scheme Launch Transition Agency, which believe me is a mouthful. So NDIA is much better. Today is the 1st of April. Yeah. Well, I'm not here to play a practical joke. The NDIS really is coming to the ACT. And in fact, it's coming in three months time. Oh my God, three months time. There's an awful lot of work to do before we open the doors, but we are opening the doors on the 1st of July. We might go to the first slide. So all of you clearly have heard about the NDIS and all of you I'm sure in your own way will know that this is something that has been a very, very long time coming for people with disability. More than decades probably. But its most recent history began probably back in about 2008 when after the Rudd government first came to power, they made a commitment to hold a 2020 summit. Does anybody remember that? Yeah. It was very interesting. It was a way of sort of generating big ideas for Australia's future. Well, I think it's safe to say that the NDIS was not just one of the ideas that came out of the summit. It was the big idea that was raised at the 2020 summit in 2008. In fact, it was put forward for consideration among others by Bruce Bonahady, who is now the chair of the NDIS Board. Bruce himself has two adult sons with severe cerebral palsy, has been a service provider, a philanthropist, a leader in the field. And so it was he proposing that this was an idea whose time had come. As a result of that idea, the Australian government then asked the Productivity Commission to conduct an inquiry into the existing care and support arrangements for people with disability across Australia. Again, I'm sure this is something that you're well aware of. The report is some 1,100 pages long, canvassed many thousands of views from people all across Australia. I think it received over a thousand written submissions. That's as well as the discussions and conversations they had with people across the country. And the resounding conclusion was indeed that we needed an NDIS because arrangements, depending on where you live, were either moderately okay, or they were uniformly unfair or fragmented. And so this is one of the legacies of having a federal system where you have state governments with different arrangements in place across Australia. This is an attempt to create a single, nationally consistent, equitable, fair and sustaining scheme for people with disability to make sure that they can live a good life. So it is very new. It's taken quite a radical approach. An approach that I have to say has been trialled in pockets in some places and found to have been quite successful as a type of model. But it is a scheme that will tailor a person's supports to their individual needs. Now, this is an enormous undertaking because it's such a radical shift away from the way things operate currently. So at the moment, in all jurisdictions across Australia, you have governments responding to pockets of need. A program is developed. A funding stream is applied. So many people, X number of, you know, sessions of service in this timeframe. Very rigid, rigid programmatic responses to identified need. This new system is going to unbundle all of those arrangements. It's going to unpick them all. Any program that currently devotes dollars to disability supports for people across Australia, eventually that money will be uncoupled from the program. All of that cash is going to flow into a single national bucket for disability support across Australia, which will then give people with disability the maximum flexibility in what they choose in terms of their disability supports, who provides it, how it is provided. But an enormous change. I don't think I need to convince you about that. We're going to use an insurance approach. So what this really means is that vast amounts of data are going to be gathered over time. So we're very, very new. So we've just had nine months of operation since the first of July last year. If you want to think about it in terms of a lifetime, we're a baby. We've only just been born. I think by nine months, kids are generally crawling. So we're on our hands and knees. We're making our way forward. But clearly we're going to bump into things. We're going to get things wrong. We're going to have to learn to crawl. That cross pattern, that's the best way to do it. So we're moving towards that kind of goal. And hopefully by the end of the first year, like most toddlers, we'll be on our feet. What the insurance approach does, though, is gather all of the data about the outcomes for every individual. This is what's most important. Obviously, all of us want the scheme to be sustainable over the long term. There's absolutely no point starting something like this and have it fail in two or three or four or five years. And so data about the outcomes for individuals. In other words, the disability supports that people are receiving under the scheme and the difference that actually makes to their lives. In other words, the level of participation they're able to take on because of the supports they're getting under the scheme is going to be gathered absolutely carefully for every person, monitored regularly. We have a unit of scheme actuaries who've been employed to look just at those things. And so over time, we'll get a much, much better picture, an evidence base, if you like, about what does work for individuals in their individual circumstances but also be able to aggregate that data up to say for this group of people, this is what seems to work best. And you can see all of that will feed into the future planning for the scheme. So choice and control is central. And I'm pretty sure I don't need to convince any of you about the fundamental importance of individuals being able to exercise choice and control. This is a fundamental human right. And yet the reality is that for people with disability, often they have not had the opportunity to exercise choice or to exercise control over the way they live their lives. And in this scheme, that extends to choice and control over the types of supports they receive, how they receive them, who provides them, and under what circumstances. The other fundamental difference, if we go back to that idea of a need being identified, a program being developed, these are very narrow strictures. So they are not needs-driven. All programs have a funding cap. And once you get to that cap, nobody else can access the funding under that program. That's the way it works. This is not a capped scheme. So people are not given a ceiling to which they can buy services that they need. Their plan is constructed according to their individual circumstances, their individual disability support needs. However, the figure is that comes out at the end of that process, that is what that person is allocated under the scheme. That's a fundamental difference. It's delivered in local communities. Obviously you are part of that local community. So yay, you're in there, boots and all. And we are working towards national coverage. So again, I don't think I'm going to need to convince this audience about the importance of starting small, of getting it right, of making adjustments and improvements as we go along to make sure that by the time we get to that point where we're going to ramp up from the first three years of trial sites to a rollout that's going to go across the nation, we need to have the settings pretty well right. So these first three years are going to be crucial in informing the people who are the scheme architects, all the jurisdictions who've bought in, including the ACT, that we can roll it out in a way that's going to be there for the nation in decades to come and that is going to be sustainable. So this is the picture at the moment. We've got seven trial sites that are being established over the first three years. On the 1st of July last year, we opened our doors and we had four trial sites across seven locations. So they were in Tasmania where we have three shop fronts, the Barwon area of Victoria, which is centred around Geelong. They opened with just an office in Geelong but they've now got an outposted office in Colac. So it probably should be eight. Anyway, we'll get to that in a minute. The Hunter in New South Wales, which currently has an office in Charlestown, and Charlestown sits right on the border of the Newcastle local government area and the Lake Macquarie government area. So it's in between the first two lots of people who will come in. And in South Australia, it's the entire state of South Australia. Who's been to South Australia? It's enormous, isn't it? And the distances between places in South Australia are enormous. Nevertheless, they are doing the whole state for a child cohort. So they're doing from birth up to 14 years. In Tasmania, it's 15 to 24 years. So all those young people who are hitting those transition points about leaving school, thinking about post-school options going into employment. And in Barwon and Hunter, they're doing the entire age group who'll be eligible to access the scheme from birth up to 64. So you can see those three pieces will fit very nicely together. Now the ACT is a little bit different again. So even though we're doing birth to 64 here, commencing in July, we are behaving in the ACT as if this is full scheme rollout. So we are commencing here because the intention is to bring in every single person with disability who will be able to access the scheme over a two-year period. So at the moment, the estimates sit at about 5,000 people. They estimate we'll be eligible to access the scheme. And just how are we going to do that? We haven't quite got the answer in. But you can imagine if we open the doors in our Northbourne Avenue office and in Emu Bank on the 1st of July and we get 2,500 people turned up, that could be quite difficult. So there's a discussion going on at the moment between the ACT government and the Commonwealth about how exactly we're going to bring people in. So we need an orderly progression of people into the scheme in the ACT. And what I can tell you is based on the experience from the four trial sites that commenced last year, that actually worked very well. So they did it slightly differently in each place. So sometimes it was about ages. So in South Australia, for example, they started with the babies first, bringing in subsequent two to three-year-olds and three to four, then four to five. They're doing six to 13 in the second year and so on. In the Hunter, it was a combination of where you lived. So there are three local government areas involved. So they said, let's go with the Newcastle LGA first. But there are some complicating overlays which had to do with which people are receiving help under which programs there. In Barwon, it was by program only. So they said, all the people who are receiving this support at the moment will transition you over yet. But what I can tell you is it's worked quite well. So we didn't get... There was no right on the 1st of July last year. People knew when they were likely to be coming in. So they'd had a letter saying, you know, this is when you're likely to come in. So the same thing will happen here in the ACT. Probably the next time somebody from the agency comes to talk to a group like this, we'll be able to give you more detail. At the moment, all I can tell you is the phasing, that's how it's referred to, the phasing is still being decided. And so that'll be soonish. Yeah, we're very close to an agreement, which is good. WA also joins on the 1st of July this year. That's going to be very interesting because the WA government is running its own NDIS-like trial. It's called My Way. But we will also be opening in the Perth Hills area of WA on the 1st of July. And in the Northern Territory, we're doing a tiny, tiny number of people in this vast area called the Barclay region. I mean, it's just huge. Peppered with tiny little remote Indigenous communities. So that is going to be quite a challenge. But you can see all of those bits of experience. If you put them all together, what you've got is something that should reflect diversity across the Australian landscape, including how a scheme like this is possibly going to operate in a remote environment. It's going to be very challenging. So the scheme did start on the 1st of July last year. That was so exciting. Our CEO, David Bowen, said, I'd like to stand somewhere just with a balloon that says, NDIS, we are opening on the 1st of July. But in fact, everything that we hoped would happen on the 1st of July did. Things have been going quite well. So this scheme is underpinned by developments that happened probably a year and a half ago, almost now. So there was a Council of Australian Governments Agreement in December 2012. That seemed like an awful long time ago. But that was the foundational general, in principle agreement, all jurisdictions across Australia saying, yes, we need this scheme. And that, of course, came on the back of the Productivity Commission's report saying this is something that Australia needs to move towards now. Bilateral agreements between individual jurisdictions who were hosting a launch site and the Commonwealth Government were signed in April last year. So you can see we're in April now, so it's okay. We haven't quite finished our arrangements for the ACT yet. And for those jurisdictions who have already agreed that they will proceed to full scheme rollout based on the learnings from the trial, so that is at the moment every single jurisdiction in Australia except for WA. So they're the only ones who haven't signed the means of agreement for full scheme rollout. So here in the ACT, in a sense, we'll be ahead of the PAC because we'll get to the end of our trial period, but in fact everybody who needs to access the scheme will have done that. And I've mentioned those other arrangements in place. The one thing I will say is before we opened the doors on the 1st of July in the trial sites last year, we conducted a number of what we called site rehearsals where we actually bought people in, who we suspected might be eligible, kind of ran them through the process. So it was a bit of a dry run to see how it all worked. And that was tremendously instructive. You can construct all your processes and say this is how it's going to work, but until you get real people in there actually doing the processes, you don't find out what could possibly go wrong. And we'll be attempting to do that again this year. So we might, we'll be in touch with you saying, you know, come and give us a run. So I belong to the National Disability Insurance Agency. When we pass the legislation for the scheme, so we are supported by a legislative base that should give all of you some comfort, I think. So most programs are not necessarily supported by legislation. The legislation tells us what we must do in what sort of timeframe for whom and how. And it's supported by other things.  I'll just put my teeth back in. Sit a set of operational guidelines which are the much more detailed advice to our planners, our local area coordinators, people working with the agency about how this is going to operate and practice. All of that material is available on our website. So all of this is completely transparent. And if any of you are looking for it, you'll find it very easily.  So our role, apart from actually delivering the scheme, that is bringing people in, getting them planning, finalizing plans, connecting them to service providers, getting them going, is also about building community awareness of disability. They're much more than fund holders, planners, administrators. So in every launch site, we've got staff whose sole role, sole, I like this phrase because it's French, and I can't speak French, but raison d'etre, isn't that a lovely phrase? I mean reason for being is to actually engage with local communities. So I did that at a national level. I've now transferred to the ACT trial site where I get to do a little bit of it, and it's good, but there is also a director of engagement that's been recently employed who was in the ACT government, so that's a really good link. Her name is Alice Tibbet, so I don't know if any of you know her already, but from now until the end of June and beyond, she'll be out there conducting public forums just like this, and there'll be a series of those as we move towards launch. We obviously have a key role and a key interest in ensuring that we're in the right direction. In a sense, that's everybody's responsibility, but there are people in the agency, as I said, in the actuarial unit whose absolute primary purpose is to make sure that things are running as well as they can. This will be the first time, by the time we get to full scheme rollout, it will be the first time ever in the history of Australia, and I don't think I'm wrong in saying this, where we have a single body of data about people with significant and permanent disabilities and the effect or the outcomes of the supports that they're receiving on their lives. So we've started collecting that data then. We have a database that's collecting information about the people, the over 4,000 already who have come into the scheme and who have plans, and we will continue to do this. If any of you read even the executive summary of the Productivity Commission's report, one of the key pieces of feedback they had from people with disabilities, their families and carers was that people hated having to repeat their story over and over and over and over and over and over. So every time somebody went to a new provider, it meant almost inevitably starting from scratch, and people get very tired of that. So with this system, we will collect that information from people once, where they have bodies of information sitting with other providers that they feel we need to have. We can make arrangements to gather that information with people's consent. But once we have it, their story is there, it is captured and then when they come in, say they start off in the ACT and in three years time, that person decides to move to South Australia for example, we will be able to just shift them across, they'll contact the agency, their information is there, they don't have to start from scratch. I mean this is one of the beauties of having something that will be a national scheme. It will be portable in the long term once we've hit full scheme rollout and it will mean that person only needs to tell their story to us just one single time. I will say however, because this is interesting, we heard that information many times even when we were in the lead up to launch, myself and a couple of people from my team went round to each of the launch sites to do some co-design sessions with families and people with disability. And even there they were saying, we get so tired of telling people our stories, but the thing is when people came in for their first planning session they were very keen to tell us their story even if it was only going to be that one time. And maybe it was with the knowledge that having told us just that one time they didn't need to repeat the details again. We will have a very strong role in developing, enhancing the disability sector. Does anybody visit our website at least occasionally, the NDIS website? I'd encourage you to do so, so ndis.gov.au is the address. The reason I'm saying that is information is updated regularly and anything that's new will appear on the carousel so there's this shifting sort of set of headings up to the top right-hand side. Now there have been some capability grants released just recently. The funding has been announced for that. So if any of you are working for a provider who think they might like to have a look at that, that's open for a month so I'd just encourage you to go and have a look at that. It's about building community capacity and capability, about organisations that PAPS might like to set themselves up as a disability service organisation. And we will have a role in undertaking research so we haven't quite commenced, although we have commenced the arrangements for doing a formal evaluation because that's really important but in the longer term the data that's gathered is going to be this very, very rich source of data for researchers both in the short and the long term. So that will be very exciting too. So progress to the end of February so this is pretty well up to date. I don't have much figures because March only finished yesterday. We've had 1,300,000 unique visitors to the website so that means actual individuals which is very good. We get around 2,500,000 visits to the website every single day. More than 5,500 people actually visited our shop fronts, the 7 that are open at the moment. So these are people who didn't have appointments. These were people just coming in seeking information or whatever. More than 7,500 access requests have been submitted so that's the formal mechanism for people to seek access to the scheme and I'll talk a bit about that later. Over 5,000 plans have now been completed so we're moving well towards the target for the first year which is to bring 9,000 people in and have them complete their plans so everybody's expecting we will hit that target. And very comfortably to people who work for the agency, the people who have come in and had their first or second or third planning session with the agency report a very high level of satisfaction with that interaction so we must be doing something right. Now this is a really important slide that's very wordy but I'll talk you through it. This gives you an idea well not an idea it gives you a summary of how things are changing between the current arrangements and how things are going to be in the future and for the ACT that's the very near future which is good. So on the left you've got access criteria in other words this is how people might access either a program or a source of funding or whatever. Under the former system that would vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction so even though you might have two very similar programs side by side the way that people got access to those could vary enormously. You know just this patchwork quilt of arrangements all the way across Australia very confusing and particularly difficult if you had a person moving from one jurisdiction to another. Under the NDIS there is one nationally consistent set of criteria that allows people to access the scheme and it's set out in our legislation and then it's supported by the NDIS rule and then also supported by our operational guidelines. Choice and control under the former system again this varied from state to state as I said you had pockets of people who were receiving individual support packages but that is the exception not the rule and so most people have very little say over the supports they receive. Under the NDIS the individual is at the centre of this scheme absolutely the individual their carers and family sit right at the centre and they are the ones who have control over what they receive and how they receive it. Level of assistance almost always capped even with individual support programs there was often a cap on what people could receive but under this new scheme it's absolutely demand driven and funding well we've already talked about thousands probably of individual programs identified need program a bit of money inflexibility you can only do this to so many people over a period of time that will all be gone now so everything will be demand driven and funding and so we'll have this single funding pool called the NDIS and the more cash we roll into that so once programs come to the end of their life the money that would been devoted to that program will roll into the NDIS and eventually we'll just have a single funding pool for everybody who's able to access the scheme I won't go too much into this but there are principles and objects in the act they're probably worth reading they give effect to Australia's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability and there are some of them there again I won't sort of go into those most of these will be like yeah absolutely nobody will want to argue against them but this is where I wanted to get to so the primary aim of the scheme is to increase participation for people with disability in all spheres of life however that might look for an individual to whatever they can bring to the table you know to the extent that they are able to do it we want to increase their participation is also consistent with our obligations under the UN Convention the scheme design actually assumes that people with disability will participate to the extent that they are able increased economic participation because I'm sure all of you know a number of people with disability who would love to work if only there weren't so many barriers if only they could get the support that they need and desire but increased economic participation for any person always translates to better long-term outcomes and the same is true of people with disability those higher participation rates as soon as you've got people with disability much more visible out there participating in whatever aspect of the community we're talking about eventually that will deal permanently with the social constraints of disability the scheme is going to work very hard to ensure that other supports so beyond the disability specific supports that people need there are a whole host of other supports to which people with disability ought rightly to have access so I'm talking about mainstream supports now transport accommodation health education all of those things everybody has a right to assistance under those schemes anywhere in Australia people with disability often have less access simply because there is either nobody to advocate for them they don't know how to navigate the system or the system says oh it's too hard too hard is not going to be an excuse anymore so that's a big chunk of our work making sure those systems work as well for people with disability as they do for people without and the scheme will fund all of the reasonable and necessary disability supports that a person does need to achieve that participation so when you're thinking about what the intent of a person's plan is that's really what it is it's to increase participation I've talked about some of this already so I'll just recap these are the three pillars that actually underpin the way that this scheme was designed so if you know about these things in your head really a framework for thinking about what this scheme is designed to do so there's the insurance approach which shares the costs of supporting people with disability across the entire community who pays tax okay if you pay tax you are contributing to the scheme it's not like a normal insurance scheme where you're going by a premium in a sense you are all paying your premium through the tax as you pay if any of you were kind of listening to what was happening in the lead up to launch last year there was an amendment made to the Medicare Act which meant that the Medicare levy there's a proportion of the Medicare levy which has gone up and that money is devoted wholly and solely to the NDIS funding so all of us are you know helping to support this in the event that any of us might well need it in the future you just don't know so choice and control I've talked about that I don't need to say that again but that's in the middle and that's in the middle for a very good reason and on the other side is community and mainstream so this sits within a philosophy that says people with disability are as entitled as anyone else to access community and mainstream supports so accessing the scheme this will be a big interest to you so once we know the phasing which is still a mystery to Sarah and I but once we know the phasing the agency will write to and the ACT government may well as well write to people to let them know when they're likely to come into the scheme so they'll have a reasonable expectation about when they're likely to be able to phase into the scheme now you might have a question about what happens to them in the meantime so there is an agreement between all governments who are participating in the trials that existing government programs or continuity of support will continue for people up to the point they actually come in and have a plan so please don't be concerned that if you have people who you are caring for who you think may well be eligible their support will not fall away on the 1st of July so arrangements will stay in place until individuals actually come into the scheme so how do you find out so this is a good question how do you find out whether you're eligible you can go on to our website right now probably Google a lot on your phone if you want to go on to our website right now and there is an electronic very simple form to fill in called My Access Checkup so it's been set up for ACT residents so you can go in have a look at that put in a few questions which really talks about the impact of a person's disability on their daily functioning and at the end of that form which really literally only takes about five minutes to do because I did it for my son who has a permanent disability you will get a little sentence that says it seems like you might be able to access the scheme here's your reference number and it will give you a five digit and so a combination of numbers and letters reference number you need to keep that because that reference number attaches to the information that you have put in the electronic form and it will say please contact us after the first of July so the reason it says that is we don't still know who's actually going to come in on the first of July but nevertheless it's a useful exercise to go through so go on have a try even if you just make up a fictional person or somebody you've worked with in the past you'll get an idea of what that information is seeking but we have a wide gateway so how many of you have had experience in the past with programs that have had all these things that you need all these hoops you have to jump through before you even get to the front door so you have to have a doctor's this and a blah that and a specialist's this and an assessment this you guys actually a part of our front door I don't know whether you knew that but anybody that you're working with that you suspect may be eligible for the scheme you can refer them to the scheme you can sit with them and do the my access checker in your office or in their home if you want to if somebody is even just wanting to chat to somebody to have kind of a preliminary discussion with somebody about what do I do you can do that so you actually are part of our front door and as such because you're in direct contact with people with disability you are going to be very important in the scheme of things so ACT residents oh that says ACT residents ACT anyway and as I said before there will be a gradual intake just an orderly progression to make sure we bring everybody in in a timely way this is the skeleton the sort of core of what the disability requirements are so this is also really important in order for somebody to access the scheme and I'm going to talk just about the ACT now people will need to be aged under 65 so that's really key they'll need to be living residing in the ACT before or on the 1st of July so you can't just move in on the 3rd of July and say I'm here I think you'll find most of your clients are already here anyway you have to have a permanent disability so we'll come back to that in a minute because some of you might be wondering oh what about people with a psychiatric illness where they're sick sometimes and not but I'll talk about that in a minute so a permanent disability and the disability must have a significant impact on the way a person lives their everyday life so I'll use my son as an example because he has a permanent disability he has something called velocardiofacial syndrome you heard of that? no most people haven't so it's a chromosomal disorder but like many of those disorders it's a spectrum disorder and some children are very very significantly impacted others like my son are more at the mild end so his main effect is a mild intellectual disability and he for example has a terrible sense of direction among other things but he does need help with some things I doubt that he's going to be able to access support under the scheme but it is permanent so it needs to have a big impact on your everyday life and your ability to participate and you are going to need supports for the rest of your life we'll talk about early intervention in a minute because it does slightly alter the picture here because you can imagine if somebody has either been newly diagnosed has just had an accident or an injury that's caused what's likely to be a permanent disability by bringing in early intervention immediately you may be able to actually reduce the amount of support that somebody might need over their lifetime so that's got a really important place in this scheme and in fact there are two ways if you like into the scheme there are people who've got a stable permanent disability that has a significant impact they will come in but people who have either been newly diagnosed or have newly acquired a disability can come in under the early intervention requirements I won't go through that so before I just get on to this I want to mention mental illness because mental illness is mental illness can be significant and it can be permanent and perhaps some of you have clients that you help who maybe have a mental illness in the ACT it's an area of particular interest I would say we're interested in helping people where we can certainly they are included in the scheme but you would all be aware that for some significant mental illnesses or psychosocial disabilities it's also called they are episodic so people certainly have a diagnosis that will stay with them for life but they may be ill for periods of time and then they'll have a period of recovery where they are not so ill so can the scheme manage this I'm confident that we can the planning and assessment process is flexible enough so that if a person comes in at a point in their lives where they are so ill but the scheme gets to know them records them at a point where they are ill help could be activated very quickly and if you think about that in terms of other people who might have a progressive or degenerative disability so say motor neurone disease might be a good example so people's needs for support are going to increase over time so there's no cure for that and people generally will get worse over time as persons need increases for disability support they need only contact their planner and make a subsequent appointment and further supports can be arranged the scheme is designed to be that flexible for most people they will have a default review date of about 12 months so this is where their disability is stable they pretty well know what they need etc but if anything happens before that 12 months is up people can just simply phone up that's right so it's designed to be like that so this is the three chunks of the things that you will find in a plan there is a lot of concentration and emphasis on what people's goals are so I don't doubt that if you tried to have a conversation with some of your clients about goals they possibly wouldn't know what you're even talking about because people with disability have had to struggle so hard to get the support that they need and are often making do with much less than they need it's very difficult for people to think beyond next week or next month this is a scheme that's actually encouraging people to think about their long term goals and this is something that people with disability have a bit of trouble getting their heads around so we're not just talking about your needs today or next week or next month what would you like to be doing next year or the year after or in five years so the experience in the four trial sites to date is that this has been the hardest thing for people to tackle it's meant that plan completion rates have taken longer because people have needed time to think about their goals they've sometimes needed assistance to think about their goals what is a goal, well it's something achievable that you want, that's what a goal is but it has to be achievable and it has to be something that you want and so there's been a bit of work going into our trial sites now with people who we know will come into the scheme to actually get them to think about that in a bit more detail and so they're a bit prepared when they come in to have their first planning conversation and there's been a bit of work sponsored by the ACT government around that very thing around helping people to think more carefully about what it is they want to do and we'll continue to do that so with each lot of people who are coming in I don't know how many more of those capacity building workshops Yes so probably a few more to go with that but we'll continue to look on that's right and we'll be looking at needs here in the ACT so again needs have varied across trial sites if you think about the South Australian context where we've had young children coming in first as it turned out that was quite difficult because parents are often dealing with the grief of having a newly diagnosed child there's often a lot of medical intervention that happens in those early days to get the child well and so it wasn't the right time for them to be coming in thinking about their child's long term goals or even to be thinking about a plan they're just dealing with the day to day the second part is the supports that people might already be receiving and these are the informal unpaid supports so supports provided by community by mainstream by families, carers, relatives you know circles of support etc all of those get set out in the plan and then the third part is the actual NDIS funded supports and people will have a budget they'll know exactly what they're up for I won't say much more about this except these are really important you know these are really important it goes back to that point I was trying to make before about this is everybody's responsibility it's not just the NDIA it's everybody's responsibility and in terms of carers because I'm sure many of you will also be connected with families and carers of people with disability they have often borne the brunt of supporting that person often over a lifetime we've got quite a lot of elderly carers in the AC2 who are very concerned about what this scheme is going to mean for their child, their son or daughter and there is a component of the planning where parents can have a separate conversation with the planner so although the intent is always to involve the person with disability in everything nothing about us without us I think is what they say but there obviously will be a place for planners to have a separate conversation with carers or parents if that's appropriate we want to make sure that carers are supported in their role and so while we wouldn't directly fund a carer for X or Y we can put supports in a plan that will make sure that carers get a break from their caring duties that's always been called respite in the past I don't know why that term's necessarily fallen out of favour but nobody seems to like it anymore I mean in many cases it can be a break for the person with disability as well as the parent or carer but those kind of breaks but the other thing it can include is referral to other agencies for support outside the NDIA and it can also include paying for training courses so there obviously will be a place for carers needing to do X or Y to increase their capacity to care for the person and the NDIA so they can pay for that that's not the extent of it you can read about that rule on the NDIS website so learning is going to be absolutely crucial so we like to think of ourselves as a learning organisation learning that's based on experience will absolutely lead to improvement I think that's the only way we can do it we're very open to feedback so at the moment we've got several mechanisms that people can use to give us feedback the trial sites has its own mechanism for receiving feedback from their participants from carers, from family, from the general public as well as us having a national way of collecting that we have a 1-800 number that operates every day of the week except not Saturdays and Sundays sorry I shouldn't tell you that operates every day but I think it's 8 to 8 8am to 8pm to take into account the WA trial sites starting in July you can ring them up and give them feedback there are complaints forms on the website that you can fill in if you've got a complaint and if you've got something nice to say of course we'd like to hear about that too so this is really important for you I'm not sure about the extent to which the ACT will necessarily reflect this experience from our existing trial sites because based on the feedback and the early trends from the first 6 months of operation we've made some adjustments already to our processes and systems to make things easier so clearly expectations about the scheme and what it will deliver are very high and they are high everywhere not just in the disability community but in the community generally I think and this is another area where support workers are going to be just so important so you have direct access to people who are likely to enter the scheme managing people's expectations is going to be really important so by educating yourself about the scheme by knowing that it's permanent disability that has a significant impact that it's about increasing participation it's not about going to the moon it's about increasing participation in the community you will help to manage expectations for scheme participants we've had a lot more access requests come in than we anticipated and the time taken to finalise plans has been longer than expected and that's going back to those complicating factors like in South Australia but mainly it has been around the fact that people have needed much much longer to think about their goals and to unpack their goals and the number of people entering the scheme at least up until the end of December was lower than expected but as I say since then there's been a real pickup in the number of plans being completed and both participants and staff have identified a number of areas where things could have been improved and in fact those improvements have been made so to be successful these are the things that we and I mean collectively we the royal we that's everybody needs to keep in mind those three pillars need to be kept in balance the insurance approach choice and control community and mainstream we need to ensure that the funding for the scheme is sustainable so there's been a funding envelope identified by the time we get to full scheme rollout which is $22 billion a year it's a lot of money you could have a lot of trips to Disneyland for that but it is a lot of money it's about a doubling of what currently goes into the disability sector now so certainly there will be a lot more funding available and that's good news but it also means that we need to keep an eye on making sure we're delivering the scheme within that funding envelope and that's what our scheme actuaries will be doing we need to make sure that the delivery is efficient and effective and again you know in the ACT we might come up against things that we haven't already uncovered in the existing trial sites and be able to make improvements here that means that the process is even more streamlined for people with disability I certainly hope so and it has to improve outcomes it has to if it doesn't we've all failed you know we've all failed so this is what's happened so far there's been a stronger emphasis on the evidence based approach for change we've streamlined the process for determining whether somebody might be able to access the scheme and that's made a big difference there's much better guidance for our decision makers so in terms of who are the decision makers in the agency about what a person gets and so on it's our planners so we have people who have the delegated authority from the CEO to make decisions about what somebody can have in their plan much better communication I hope with the community so that they understand what reasonable and necessary means and we're streamlining our admin and plan implementation to reduce the burden on the JAA staff we're building sector capacity I won't go into all of this you can find it on the website we ran a round called practical design fund at the beginning I think of end of 2012 and all of the projects that have been finalised you can find them on the website if you're interested to see what they came up with we had a conference last year that's old news, god nearly a year ago and sector development fund and this is where the capacity building grants come in so I mentioned them earlier worth going on the website to have a look at those and transition will be gradual so there'll be this gradual transition I'm not exactly sure how it's almost like a magic box at the moment but just reassure you next time we come back we'll be able to tell you all about that wide gateway so I mentioned the web the call centre the 1-800 number the shopfront anybody can turn up to a regional shopfront at any time so once the doors open on the 1st of July here you're very welcome just to come in and visit us there are information products being developed now for our ACT audiences and we don't just print them in hard copy everything also goes up on the web so if you were ever looking for a copy of something you could just go to the web and print one off from there we'll have products going out to our prospective participants once our phasing is known and we are working on a planning kit and a plan implementation kit for people who become participants in the scheme there's still quite a bit of work to do I try not to think about it just get through today it'll be fine but as I said before there'll be a continual rolling program of community engagement so just look out for that again it'll all be on the website the schedules if any of you are signed up to the newsletter so it's free an electronic newsletter if you haven't go to our website and sign up for that there'll be a gradual movement of national office staff from Canberra to Geelong by the end of June so obviously the ACT trial site staff are staying here because we need to be on the ground but almost everybody else is going to national office in Geelong we're preparing for that formal evaluation an external independently conducted evaluation of the scheme that will be starting soon and this is part of our preparation of people and organisations in the ACT for 2014 and that's probably as much as I wanted to say I could keep going but you know you might have some questions


And welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Deila Nyonygida, and we're broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com. You may also subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list at that site as well. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people. Our guests share with us their story, their journey with us, and how they were able to build successes in Hawaii's business environment. In the ThinkTech studio today is Beauty Goddess and boss lady herself, Elizabeth Uehara. Liz is the owner of the original Beauty Goddess studio. Liz, thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Deila. I'm super excited to have you. Me too. Tell me about Beauty Goddess Studio. What is that? So Beauty Goddess Studio is, it's a place where you can get your lashes done. We do lash lifting for the natural lashes. We also do facials. We do waxing. We do lash tinting. Basically we work from like the chest up. So anything to enhance this part of you, which helps you to feel brighter, happier, cheerier, whatever. So tell me about the name. How did the name come about? Beauty Goddess actually came from being in the beauty industry and then my background of growing up in Hawaii. So I wanted to incorporate the Goddess Pele and some strength of women and that character, as well as the beauty part of it. Not that it's like strength and beauty, I guess, for women to feel good about themselves and then it's more powerful that way. My original logo was a goddess and then we morphed it into an eye. Fantastic. Fantastic. Now, I know that you have a very interesting story behind how you finally got to Beauty Goddess Studio here in Hawaii, in Kamuki, Hawaii, and in Kailua. But I think our viewers would love to hear your journey because for a lot of entrepreneurs like yourself, it's having a vision and then how do you make that happen? And so I'd love for you to share with us your journey way back in the beginning. I mean, a lot of people go to school and get degrees, but that's not what they end up doing. Yes, yes. And perhaps it's because their passion turns into something else or whatnot. Tell me about your beginning. How did you know this was your niche? So when I, well, I'll start like way back when I was in high school. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and my mom was always encouraging me to continue my education and I think that I didn't really know like college-wise was the thing for me, but I loved fashion and makeup and hair and I was already cutting my friend's hair and we were always going thrift store shopping and so it was recommended to me that I go into beauty school. So I signed up for Honolulu Community College in their cosmetology program and that's where I got my degree in cosmetology. It was in AS back then and it was very affordable. And then it was from there where we were listening to music and learning about trends in fashion and Hawaii also was a little behind on something. So we were always looking for what's happening on the mainland, what's happening in Europe, what's happening in Asia, the Asian countries or whatever. So I just kept, I'm always looking for the next thing. What's more interesting? What are they doing with this and that and eventually I started as a hairdresser cutting hair for my friends and then moving to LA, I decided to start doing hair there. LA was a whole new experience because that was really where I worked my job, my first like real job in the industry that I had gotten my degree in and it was it was crazy and exciting but tons of stories with that too. I learned a lot about myself. That's another show. Yeah, that is another show. I was 19 and so as time goes on, you start to learn about yourself and come into yourself. So I think after that I had, I had come back to Hawaii and then I moved to Canada and then I met my future spouse and so we, I got married and moved down to Seattle, Washington and in Seattle was where I really developed the whole concept of having my own business. I realized that I really don't want to work for anybody and I felt like I can do it myself and I'm better and or whatever like I can really see more than what was right in front of me. There was some future glimmer in that and it was, I was doing makeup and hair. I was doing bridal work. I was doing photo shoots, you know, fashion photography, hair and makeup for that. I was working as a hairdresser in a salon as well but I also started having kids so I had small children and I had to be able to balance career, kids, household, life, right? As women we juggle many hats and juggle many balls. So I think that that was where I started to figure out I needed to work smarter and become more self-sustaining as opposed to working for an employer. And then I had a vision. I was just like, okay, you know, women want to feel better, feel good about themselves. We should all be supporting each other. Women in business. I had a lot of great women mentors that helped support me and I felt that I wanted to give that back. I wanted my kids to be proud of me and value who I was as a mom as well as an entrepreneur. I never considered myself an entrepreneur but I definitely had that mindset and I started looking into what can I do to make something out of what I'm passionate about. Back then those little baby steps, tons of research. The internet was like in its infancy stages I guess but I had a computer now, right? Like I can type on a computer and search things. It's like amazing. Kids, anyway, it's really funny. Just never know, right? Like it's so easily available, now you can do it on a phone. But back then it was like we got a computer, I can go on the internet, I can see what's out there in the world, what are other people doing. I was taking what I knew as a hairstylist, as a makeup artist and how can I find those little, that right niche where can I fit myself into that. And then my father got sick and we brought him back and I really, I wanted to be able to care for him and take care of him. So I kind of put some things on the back burner for a little bit. But I always knew that I was going to do something more. And so during those years where I was caring for my dad and caring for the kids, the little bubbles bubbling in the back, ideas are forming and I really was like, okay, I'm going to do something with this because once this is taken care of, you know, there's got to be something for me as well. So that was the beginning of the journey that we were going to come back here. My father passed and it was the catalyst for the next phase of my life. And I wanted to bring my kids home. So I said, okay, let's move back to Hawaii. And I, being from Hawaii, you have a huge support system here, which is, even after we hadn't been here for 10 years, it's amazing how that still exists. And then, of course, Internet and telephones and things like that, you know, cell phones, not telephones, but... Back in our day, telephones. Yeah, I know. Geez, it's so funny. But... Chords connected to the wall. I remember that. I just, it's really crazy how much technology aids you in business now and how much faster it makes things happen. You know, I've been in business here in Hawaii for 12 years, and after that, it was 10 years in Seattle, and then I'm trying to jump into a new island, I mean, a whole new place, and then start all over again. It was hard.  Anyway, so when we were planning, my dad had passed and we decided to do my father's service in Hawaii, and I got to reconnect with people at that point, and I really decided that I really, really wanted my kids to grow up in Hawaii. It's a special place. It has... There's nowhere else in the world that you can grow up like this, and it's still in many ways where it's a big city, but at the same time, we're a small island and a small community of people, and I wanted my kids to feel that. It was really important, and I think it's also what made me who I am. So we made the transition to come back, and you got a down size, got rid of all our stuff. And just thinking small, we're going to live in a box. I think we started off in a one bedroom apartment when we moved back here, and I was fortunate enough to have friends who had an apartment building that we could move into and start from there, but you just don't realize how much your friends in your community are going to help you until you ask. So I think that was where I started looking in Hawaii, okay, what am I going to do next? How am I going to take this education that I have as a licensed cosmetologist? I was licensed in Hawaii. I was licensed in LA. I was licensed in Washington, and take that and do something with it. I know I can do hair. I know I can do makeup, and I know I can build clients. So I did what I knew. I started with doing hair and makeup for weddings. I went and looked out for all the people that were doing hair and makeup. So I asked them, you know, do you need a stylist? Do you need employees? Do you need someone to work for you? And I started as a freelance artist first. And that way I could kind of pick and choose when I wanted to work, and I could still go pick up the kids from school, and I could still be at PTA meetings and things like that. It allowed me the flexibility I needed with my children. And I had created the name Beauty Goddess when I was in Seattle. So Pele and the Goddess kind of came into a little bit smaller focus. And it was really about empowering women.   And I really value that in us as women. So you know, it's now. I think that it's an amazing story, particularly because we do have a lot of residents, people who are born and raised in Hawaii, who venture off to the mainland to see what's out there and what it's about and want to come home and make a go of something. And then of course, that there's a sacrifice to come back because the cost of living is high and those things and then the cost of startup. So we're going to go to a quick break, but when we come back, I'd really like for you to share with your audience about the struggle, you know, because that obviously has made you who you are and the success that you are today. And then we'll talk about that success and how you morphed into this goddess because it's really amazing. So we are going to take that short break. This is Business in Hawaii and we'll see you back here shortly. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days, grumpy days, kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. We're not hungry for breakfast. We're hungry for more, more ideas, more dreams, more fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more.  Aloha. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech, Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii, who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. Joining us today is Elizabeth Uehara, beauty goddess, actually the beauty goddess and boss lady of Beauty Goddess Studio here in Hawaii. When we left to commercial, we were talking about that transition, how you went and you started your family out in Seattle, but you really felt that your pull was back to Hawaii, even down to a spiritual sense, how Pele and what she stands for really embraced your vision for where you wanted to go. But there was a lot of sacrifice in that. Yes. I had to move kids, two of them. They were, my daughter was in first grade and my son wasn't even in kindergarten yet. We were adding to figure out preschool, which preschool, the cost of preschool here, oh my goodness. Right. You need a second job, too. Yeah. I think I, twice I had to continue to do hair in order to pay the bills, but I'd always, I guess I've always had that mindset that there's something I can do and make it not a job, that it's going to be fun and I'm going to enjoy it. So I knew I could do hair. I knew I could do makeup. And so I went and found those nooks and crannies of what I can actually actually make money at.  He found a job here to be able to do that and be able to provide us with health insurance and, you know, and a roof over our head. And we started really small. The kids didn't know any difference, thank goodness, but I also needed to be there for them when they got out of school. We had to, we shared a car when we first moved back. Yeah, that was exciting in itself, anyway. You know, the first car we buy here, of course, is a mini van, but we shared it. I'd take him to work or, you know, we'd figure that out.  We really kept a really tight budget so that we could manage all these things. And I had the flexibility to be able to work freelance and make money when I could and not work when I had to, when I had to do something for the kids. And I also felt it was really important for me to get to know my community. So I wanted to be there at school to get to know the other parents, and that's also where I found my network.  Oh, what do you do, right? And that's, oh, well, a little check mark in my head. Oh, that person works in marketing. Okay, just remember that. Oh, these guys are in theater. I might need that sometime.  You know, you start, it's not, because here in Hawaii, it's about networking with your community, right? So that was where I really started to figure out how I was going to be able to do business. But it was sort of on the, on the back burner in my head. But that's always how I thought, like, I'm going to do stuff with my kids so I can be there for them. And then this is my community that I'm going to be building around me. So as that progressed and I was realizing, okay, now it's time for me to get more, you know, we're being able to, the kids are getting older. I could do a little more stuff. I was trying to find that niche. So I was using my wedding hair and makeup business and my girlfriend was in Japan and she was telling me about this service that you get your lashes curled, it's your natural lashes, but it like makes your eyes look bigger.  They want to look like little dolls. And I'm going, are you kidding me? Who does that? Who perms their eyelashes? That's like crazy. And, but I was doing hair and makeup for weddings and most brides are pretty natural. They want a more soft look.  Let me see what, let me see what I can do with this. And so at first I was practicing on myself, which is really funny when you're trying to like put something on one eye and then like try to look on the other side. And so I needed to say it was kind of an interesting experiment just working on myself. But I figured it out. And that's kind of my thought process too is I like to to work on it myself. I like to touch it and feel it and figure it out myself. Of course, before I go and experiment on anyone else, even my kids, I want to, I'll do it on myself first. So anyway, as I was learning about it, I started doing more research on this whole lash lifting thing. And there wasn't really anyone in Hawaii that was doing it. I it was it was available in some small salons, but you know, it wasn't like promoted.  So I I decided to go to a couple of salons this to try it out on how they do it. Let me go see what they do and then I'll come back and check it out. So I'd go and get service done. I'm like, they just put it on.  No, where are you people?  I get it. Like your eyes look bigger. But, you know, the curl would be curled back or it just wouldn't look right or my lashes didn't look as long as I would have liked them to. And my mentality has always been, I can do it better. I can do it better. So I went with it and I my girlfriend, I I tried to do more research. She was trying to give me like the name of the product that they could get in Japan. And I'm like, OK, I got to find something. Somebody's got to have it. Could not find it anywhere. All the product they had available in the beauty supply stores here and what was available on the main line. Nothing worked like the product that I got from Japan. So my girlfriend moves to New York and she goes to get her lashes lifted in New York City. In New York City, how many agents are there? OK, there are a lot now. But this is, you know, 10 years ago. She's like, oh, my gosh, I met this girl. You know, she's from Japan. She she makes all these, you know, she brings in all these lash lifting products. All she does is lash lifts. Like, that's it. I can do this. She does that in New York City. How many girls do I have in front of me while I'm doing the moms and the brides and the sisters and my, you know, cousin or whatever? You know, I can do this. So I contacted her in New York. We did a training. She taught me her way. And then I was able to get my product from her directly, although she was getting it from Japan. So it went from Japan to New York to Hawaii. Then I was trying to figure out, you know, how many how many people can I do in a day? How many hours do I need? Where can I do this? So I just started looking in the newspaper for commercial retail space. I thought it was going to be so over my price range. But, you know, if you research and look things up, Craigslist or whatever, you're amazed at what's out there.  So my first official location was in Kapa Hulu. It was actually quite a large space for the amount of money I was paying at that time. And the owner of the building, it wasn't it was an actual person, not a company, which I thought was amazing. I had parking is a key. You need parking. You need space and electricity and water. Hopefully a bathroom. If you're lucky, you get a bathroom. But it was an older building in Kapa Hulu. The rent was like spot on. I was like, OK, I can afford this. So now what do I do? You know, like I have I've got this like little market of women that I can kind of hit up. But, you know, I've got to build this into something else. So I took what I knew, which was hair and makeup. So I did hair and makeup there. I still met my brides there. So that could keep and sustain my income. And then I brought in this new service. So I did my marketing. Well, I joined some women networking groups and women in business and networking groups. And I said, I need 20 volunteers because nobody's really done this, right? And I'm putting, you know, stuff on your eyelids and near your eyeballs, and everyone freaks out about that. I'm a freak about my eyeballs, but I'm like, it's going to be fine. Anyway, trust me, trust me. Yeah, so I sent out an I sent out an email and e-blast to this women's network community. And I said, I need 20 volunteers to try out these new products. And it's lash lifting. You're going to curl your natural lashes, but I need your feedback. And do you know how fast 20 women responded? Yeah, I was shocked. Those are gutsy women. They were like, I'm in, I'm in.  It was like, bam, bam, bam. They were just responded really quickly. You don't think people are reading their emails. They are. But yeah, all these women like respond to I had more than 20. I actually had more than 20 because I was like, well, fine, I'll just take you. And that was where I started. That was the beginning and it was just it was the cutest thing. Everyone was so supportive.  And so you get to I've got 45 minutes to an hour. Well, their lashes are processing. And, you know, I'm talking to them, getting to know them. What do you do? How did you get here? You know, how who are you?  I just learned about them. And it was kind of like a therapy session. And then they got these like really pretty eyelashes. And it was awesome. I'm like, I love this. This is so awesome. And I kept trying to sell it to the brides. I'm like, you guys want to do lash lifting? It's so it's so much easier. Less maintenance than the lash extensions. It's easier on you. And the girls are like already getting lash extensions. So I'm like, all right, that's not my market. My market is every day women, moms, women going to work, which is pretty much everyone, you know, every day people. So I just stuck with that. And it just started to snowball. And here you are. Yeah. And the goal is for me is I want my clients to leave my studio in a positive and better headspace. You know, like, I feel better. I feel good. I feel pretty. And that really is, that's really important to me. And so today, following your passion, hair, makeup, fashion led you to the Lash Studio. You are in Kaimuki and in Kailua, is that correct? Yes. And people, how can people find you? So, well, I'm on the internet.  You can also email me at beauty goddess, b-e-a-u-t-i-g-o-d-d-e-s-s at gmail.com. We also have a phone number. I prefer text messages. We do not have a receptionist yet. We do not have a receptionist. We still manage everything. I still check the emails as well. But our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Liz, I want to congratulate you on your success, allowing yourself to follow a passion, empowering women to feel great about themselves, and taking the time, the thoughtful time, to go through your journey and then share that with us. And I think for all those aspiring entrepreneurs, your story is amazing. So congratulations. We are out of time. But I want to thank Liz for joining us today. I want to thank the amazing production staff in the studio here. If you would like to be a guest on the Business in Hawaii show, email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 o'clock. And we look forward to seeing you here next week.


So now the floor is open to questions for the next 15, 20 minutes. So far away. Khamenei. Khamenei Singh at Colorado School of Mines. I had a question that might relate to anything that any one of you were talking about. But I know that this is a workshop in part about remote sensing. But it seems like soft data could potentially inform on water budgets or some of the systems that any of you are talking about. I'm wondering if that's been anything that you've thought about using, or state of the science on terms of using that sort of information? Part, yes. That's what I meant by using natural language processing to start getting a lot of information on a proxies. In fact, I view the remote sensing activity as a proxy source of information as well. So on demand for the extent of pumping and how groundwater levels might be dropping, an interesting proxy that we used in India was to get sales by district of pumps of different capacities and different types. Because the interesting thing that when Matt was, I don't remember. I think Ali asked the question of Matt as to whether there was data availability in India. 10, 15 years ago when we were able to get the data, that was not a problem. But the problem was most of the benchmark stations that they were monitoring for groundwater were in the upper 15 meters. And farmers were pumping at depth. So how do you actually make any use of that data? And what we found was that in the annual surveys, farmers reported whether or not they had bought pumps and at what depth they had installed them, et cetera. So we were able to reach out to industry association for pump manufacturers. And they were able to give us data on the horsepower of the pumps, whether it was a submersible or a centrifugal and so on. And since then, Lorelyn, who's there, she's been also looking at media reports of people reporting anything to do with groundwater quantity or quality, geocoding that, and then comparing that with whether or not there are academic research papers there. And you can see that there's going to be a divergence between those two kind of pieces of information. But it's the beginning. I think thinking about soft information for groundwater characterization, there's a long history, you know, using fishies and so on for stratigraphic information and then mapping it in, but using a more diverse source of information for converging on budgets, I think is a beginning. Yeah, I was also going to just say that geologic cross sections, geologic maps, that might be a good place to look for. Yeah, Jim Butler, Kansas Geological Survey. Let me just build on Dr. Singh's question. And one of the most important soft data sources would be the distribution of pumping wells in these heavily pumped areas because you'll see there are gaps in terms of a spatial coverage. And there's a reason for that. And the reason is regarding the transmissivity of the aquifer, the water quality, et cetera. So we need to really fully utilize that piece of soft information as well. And let me also just ask the first speaker, Manu, about the deep groundwater in the Midwest. There are no shallow aquifers in those areas. Those shallow aquifers that you were showing were associated with streams, channels, and there's just not much. There used to be a shallow aquifer. The whole system used to be shallow, but we have changed that through time. So just something that I wanted to point out. I considered using an India picture rather than the US one, but I had the US one handy. Any other questions? Please. Hi. Sorry, good morning. I see you go from the World Bank. So we have several projects. It's like the irrigation overused the groundwater. And we are trying to manage the irrigation in agriculture so to reduce the groundwater overuse. So in our case, the original water balance is really important because we lead it for the water resources and location management. But in our case, it's like we don't have data for how much groundwater was overused. So actually there are several questions in practice. We are looking for the data available or the available tools or models can really help us to solve those questions. So there are tools available to estimate groundwater use if you don't have those data, but Manu brought up some really big concerns with some of those tools. So typically they'll look at the water demand. So you'll get evapotranspiration, crop coefficients. You can estimate that with satellite data or with ground-based data if you know what crops are being grown. But, and then how much surface water is available. And I don't know if you have that information, but that's another challenging piece to get oftentimes. But then the big challenges are people over-irrigating their crops or are they under-irrigating their crops and that one is really challenging to know. If you have some estimates of soil moisture, you get a sense of if the soil moisture is not changing much over the growing season, then you get a sense of that. But again, it's a very challenging thing to estimate without having that actual data set. Let me add something to you guys on the table here. How about electricity? Is electricity a good surrogate for pumping? Or is there, can you discern the signal between the electricity used in a pump and in a house? I mean, obviously they're using house. Yeah, so we spend quite a bit of time trying to work our way through that. If you assume that the pump efficiency is the textbook efficiency, it's an exact measure. The problem is that the pump efficiencies were all over the place when we tested pumps. But in response to your question, what I was going to say was there's a major pump manufacturer in India called Kidloscar. And we had extensive discussions with them for them to add a water meter into each pump and then have it recorded and be made available through various ways. That's only a $10 or $15 add-on to each pump. And they're willing to do it. Their reaction was there's no market for this pump because it's the question that was brought up on data earlier. Why would someone want to collect that information? The government should, the world bank should, anybody who's trying to manage should. So if it was mandated by the government that all wells have to have pumps which have a meter built into it, they would totally make it. And then the cost would come down because of volume of sales. And then you have direct data on each use, which if you're trying to manage is actually very important because all the surrogates don't really help you. Go ahead, Jim. Okay, this Jim Butler can to survey again. I agree completely with your comments on water use. And here I'm gonna brag a bit about the state of Kansas because we do have all of the high capacity pumping wells are metered, it reported annually and it's subject to regulatory verification. So that sort of data set, we as a community need to exploit so that we can assess some of these methods and get a feel for how folks are operating in the field. So I think on the electricity, using electricity information as a surrogate, one issue is that you have other aspects like subsidy and other things that really completely mask what is actual consumption of electricity for withdrawing. So that's one issue. The other question that I wanted to pose is we do see, or in other words in academia, we talk about conjunctive management. We do have a detailed, like for example, if it is surface water management, reservoir, rule curves and other things available. But on the other hand, conjunctive management in a detailed way, how this is how it should be operated, there is nothing existing, your closure on the management part is really a big challenge. I mean, even in places where you have significant groundwater extraction, you don't have a detailed information on this is how it's going to operate. So an integrated planning doesn't exist at all because groundwater to some extent is appropriated very locally. And so it's a very big challenge. This is Jessica Lawson, my name, Challenge Corporation. Just to circle back to the electricity question and thinking about, and the question from the World Bank a little earlier, speaker, participant from the World Bank, thinking about the international development context in places where we are most data limited are often agriculturally dependent places in many times. If we're talking about Sub-Saharan Africa, there's increasing exploitation of groundwater in off-grid areas. So electricity information is going to be very challenging there because the pumps are either solar or diesel generator powered. It's just yet another challenge in terms of filling in the picture where the data is most needed. Hi, Jim Doborowski, USDA, NIFA. Mark, so how fresh is fresh? And is there a temporal shift to these volumes? And how about a major use scenario that you think of for these continental shelf sands that hold these large volumes? Okay, how fresh is fresh? The magnetotoleric systems image formation resistivity. So we don't know whether some of the more well, I would say we don't know. The wells, offshore wells, the salinities are in many cases under 1,000 milligrams per liter, but they can get up into brackish conditions of 5,000 milligrams per liter. So some water treatment may be required to produce these waters and use them. Both Holly Michaels and I have done calculations that suggest that you could develop these offshore fresh water for 30 years but eventually it's a non-renewable resource and eventually you'll get seawater intrusion. What was your second question? Whether it had temporal variability. Good question. We think these are quite old ground waters, probably a place to see an age, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years old as a result of emplacement over many sea level cycles. And in terms of a major development scenario, coastal mega cities potentially could use these resources in times of extreme drought, thinking about Cape Town or Saupolo that had experienced these recent droughts. I would pitch this as a backup water supply or even for New York City if their aqueduct system failed. But this is expensive. Offshore wells are $5 million, just the exploratory wells and piping to the land and desalinization facilities to maybe clean the water up. Those are all unknowns as well as whether it's got arsenic in it or not or other contaminants. So this is a new area that I think is worth pursuing but there's a lot of unknowns and so far nobody has developed these resources because of the cost, I think. I think I missed it when you were talking. Is the depth to water a kilometer or so? It's less than a kilometer. It's somewhere between 200 to 400 meters depth offshore. Okay, so then my reaction is this, this is a non-starter, sorry. I'll explain why. The energy requirement for desalination of seawater is 120 meters. So if you could basically take ocean water directly and desalinate it, the energy cost of that is already a third of the energy costs that you're going to have for pumping this up. So, and then if you still have to treat it and the well is deeper and more expensive, then economically it won't be competitive. Well, I'm not an expert on the transmission system and pumping system issues but the cost of desalinating brackish water is a lot lower than desalinating seawater, so did you? But I think it's about 30 meters equivalent head for brackish, 120 meters for fully seawater. But if you're pumping from 500 meters, you've already trumped all that. Okay, that may well be. In some of the wells that have been drilled, like off of Florida, there are artesian conditions. So there's, we don't really know what the head conditions are in a lot of these systems, but there, yeah, and on Nantucket where I have experienced that the deep aquifers are under artesian conditions and higher than the shallow aquifers, but that may be the case that it's not universal. We have two questions from online. This is from Francisco Munoz-Ariola from the University of Nebraska. The context was data and uncertainties in numerical modeling and diagnosis and his questions are, how can we identify and use socio-hydrological variables and processes that could lead to address the challenge of meeting water demands? And how could we compare the uncertainties from geophysical data and socio-hydrologic data? Yes, that was the question to Holly because her talk was on that, would that be reasonable or was it just to the spanner? I think that conflict is always there. On the one hand, when we work with groundwater systems and you put a lot of effort into the characterizing the physical system, the criticism always is that the social factors are poorly constrained and then sometimes it's the other way around. With a lot of metering and everything, you probably get a good sense of the withdrawals but some other aspects, ideally you want both and even if you have both, you probably can't get water quality right as Holly showed because it takes a lot less effort and detail to get just a water quantity model right for groundwater but once it comes to water quality and contaminant concentrations and things like that, you really want meter scale, sometimes characterization. Carly, the second question is one more, right? How could we compare the uncertainties from geophysical data and socio-hydrologic data? That's a very site-specific thing. There are some places that are more data-rich from the human side and others that are more data-rich from the physics side. So let's put an end to this panel and go for lunch. I'm sure everybody's very hungry because we did not have enough food at breakfast today. It's my biggest complaint. I'd like to first ask you all to give a big round of applause to the panel.