Checking your identity

When you meet with an NDIS partner to find out about disability supports, or apply to the NDIS, we will ask for documents that prove your identity.

We will also ask to check your identity documents if you are a child representative, nominee, or authorised representative.

Confirming your identity is one of the ways that we protect your privacy, by making sure we only discuss your information with the right people.

We are improving how we check your identity when you phone our National Contact Centre. 

We need to establish your identity before discussing or updating your record or one you’re authorised for.

We will ask for more information when a participant, or their authorised representative, phones our National Contact Centre for some enquires such as to update bank details or access participant portals. 

We will send you a one-time code to the contact details on your record. We will ask you to confirm this code with us. 

If we can’t send you a code, we will ask you some additional security questions.

We’ll ask you some security questions based on the information we hold about you. This may include:

• details from letters or notices we have sent you
• information you have shared with us
• details from your records, such as information about your plan or budget
• information about your interactions with us
• details about your plan use and the support you receive 
• information about documents you have shared with us. 

To save time, please have your NDIS number ready when you phone us.

Read more about our improvements to checking your identity. 

We check your identity documents in 2 ways: 

• We need to check you’re the person that the documents belong to. We complete a face-to-identity check to make sure you’re the person in the photo identity.
• We also need to make sure your identity documents are real. The quickest way to do this is to give us consent to use the Document Verification Service (DVS).  

To do this, we’ll ask you to:  

• Show us the original documents, in person or by video call. 

• Let us record your document details, and the way we checked them, on our secure computer system.

Completing a face-to-identity check is how we can tell you are the person the documents belong to. We can do this in person or during a video call. 

In a face-to-identity check, we will: 

• Check you have the right identity documents, and that they are the original versions. 
• Check each document to make sure the personal details and signatures match. 
• Look at your face and compare this with your photo identity. We make sure your features match the features on the photo.

The Document Verification Service (DVS) is a national secure online system. Australian, State and Territory government agencies, including the NDIS, use the DVS to make sure identity documents are real. 

We use the DVS to check identity documents given to you by Australian, State and Territory agencies. We won’t use the DVS if you don’t give us consent, but it will take us longer to finish checking your identity. 

If we can’t check your documents using the DVS, we’ll need to keep a copy of your identity documents on our computer system.  

For most people, we only need to check your identity documents once. We will normally do this the first time we meet. But if you change your legal name, we need to confirm evidence of this change in a document. We’ll update your record with the new documents and your legal name.

We will also check who you are each time you, your child representative, authorised representative, or nominee contact us. We’ll ask for three pieces of personal information we have recorded, and then check that this matches the information on our secure computer system. This is how we check we’re speaking to the right person.

Although we already have controls in place to protect participant information, NDIS participants can ask for extra protection and privacy measures on their information. We call this restricted access.

You can request restricted access by calling our National Contact Centre or talking to your my NDIS contact or NDIS partner.

Once you have restricted access, NDIA staff and partners who have permission to access your information can support you and help with any enquiries you may have.

Read more about why and how we ask you for information, what we do with it, and how we keep you information safe in our privacy and information guideline.

To learn more about how we check your identity and giving consent to share your information or let someone else do things for you, read our factsheets on:

• confirming your identity
• understanding consent
• nominees
• child representatives.