We will continue to strive to provide excellent and consistent policing services to the Victorian community by transforming our service delivery and operating model.

We will look at the way we prioritise demand, plan effective responses, allocate tasks, and coordinate our resources.

Making our staff allocation agile requires an integrated, enterprise-wide rostering system so that we can effectively deploy our people to where they are most needed.

Victoria Police will improve its capacity to respond to future demands and provide a more visible and consistent policing service to the community that supports safety and maintains confidence in Victoria Police. This includes on our roads where we have an active role and need to contribute to a strong road safety culture.

We will maintain our focus on providing strong and consistent responses to family violence, sexual offences, child abuse and serious and violent crimes.

We will strengthen the way we work with the community to prevent the harm caused by these crimes and we will continue to hold offenders to account.

We will work to refresh our critical information and communication technology. This will ensure that our systems talk to each other, and our digital assets are updated so that our staff have the best available technology.

We will implement a Laboratory Information Management System to streamline the way we work in our Forensic Services Department.

We will continue moving away from paper-based correspondence and deliver an enterprise-wide electronic document system.

We will also be able to issue electronic penalty notices on the spot.

We will continue to improve our financial sustainability by implementing a program of efficiency measures and structural reforms, including delivering more enhanced financial functions through cloud technology platforms.

New and improved technologies offer great potential for serious and organised crime groups to pursue existing and new types of crime.

By adopting an agile and dynamic approach, with new techniques of prevention, detection, and investigation, we will seek to disrupt crime at every level and create a hostile environment for criminals.

In 2023–24 we will focus on preventing offences that cause high levels of harm to individuals and our community by implementing strategies targeting cybercrime, serious and organised crime, youth gangs, and illicit firearms. These strategies will set out a clear approach for Victoria Police, partner agencies and communities to deliver innovative solutions and best practice to prevent and address crime and keep communities safe.

We will continue to implement the Victoria Police Drug Strategy 2020–2025 to minimise the harmful impact of drugs in the Victorian community.

In addition, we will review the effectiveness of our VIPER Taskforce, and make recommendations that will lead to us improving the operating model so that we have the best method of targeting serious, violent, and organised crime.

The Victorian community invests significant responsibility and trust in the people who work for Victoria Police.

We will recruit and train additional police and protective services officers.

In relation to attrition, we will continue recruitment to fill vacant police positions over the balance of this financial year.

We will develop a strategic workforce plan to better manage our workforce today and plan for our future.

We will further embrace diversity and inclusion through the implementation of the Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Framework, so that our workforce reflects the community we serve.

We will explore how we can train our people more effectively, so they are able to respond with confidence and empathy, safely and respectfully.

Our people need the best equipment and facilities to help them do their job so we will continue to roll out conducted energy devices to all frontline police and protective services officers, deliver an increased number of preliminary breath testing devices with enhanced functionality, and we will build new police stations and upgrade existing ones.

The culture of our workforce is critical.

We will focus on embedding our CultureWorks program into all our training programs, so our people can bring sound judgement to their decisions and collaborate and innovate where they can.

We will continue to implement enhanced promotional processes through the Integrated Leadership Development Framework.

We will ensure all our police, protective services officers and police custody officers have completed Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Training so we can improve our interactions with Aboriginal people.

To ensure we achieve best practice, we are reforming our complaints and discipline system to strengthen accountability and community confidence.

We will also continue to progress recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants.

The safety and wellbeing of our people is a priority for Victoria Police.

We will develop a new operational safety strategy to ensure our frontline members have the best training and skills to keep each person, in every interaction, safe.

We will be proactive to provide support to our staff who are injured so they can return to work as soon as possible.

We will strive for sustainable gender equality through our Equal, Safe & Strong: Victoria Police Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2030, so that all Victoria Police employees work in a safe and equal workplace, have access to equal resources and opportunities, and are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness.

We will finalise negotiating the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) for our police and protective services officers. We are working with our people to ensure the EBA meets the needs of both the organisation and our workforce, including working towards protective services officers being able to move between work units, working towards a fully integrated workforce. This will also be the case when negotiating commences for the EBA for our Victorian Public Service employees.

We will support our people in a diverse and flexible career as much as possible, while balancing the need to deliver services 24/7 to the Victorian community.

Our people are important. To ensure we have skilled people, ready and able to respond, we will:

• attract, recruit, train and deploy 502 additional police and 50 protective services officers
• roll out conducted energy devices to every frontline police officer and protective services officers
• modernise our police facilities through our infrastructure program of works
• progress recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants.

To build community trust and confidence, we will continue to connect with our community partners through the Neighbourhood Policing Framework, and work with the community on solutions to local crime and safety concerns.

We will continue our work with road safety partners including the Department of Transport and Planning and the Transport Accident Commission to reduce the number of lives lost and serious injuries suffered on our roads and to make our roads safer. This work will include targeting road safety risks such as speed, drugs, and alcohol.

We will continue working closely with our partners to enhance practices and responses to children, young people, and other priority community groups to reduce the harm caused by family violence, sexual offending, and child abuse.

We will connect with local partners to respond to issues relating to young people to ensure that those at the greatest risk have access to the support they need.

We will expand the Embedded Youth Outreach Program to more locations, and we will launch a Victoria Police youth strategy.

We will continue to strengthen existing partnerships with criminal justice stakeholders including the courts, the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office, and the Office of Public Prosecutions, generating trust and effective collaboration.

We will continuously improve and promote proactive and comprehensive disclosure practices – aiming to be consistent, fair, equitable and transparent, and exercising appropriate powers and discretion to drive productive and positive justice outcomes.

Shifts to best practice evidence-based responses across a range of community safety issues can result in changes to legislation, and in turn changes to the way we respond.

We will continue to support the implementation of new health-led models for emergency responses to mental health crises and public drunkenness, which will see reduced police involvement.

We will continue to contribute to government-led legislative reform on critical issues, including the minimum age of criminal responsibility supported by an alternative service model, bail and youth justice.

We will continue to implement recommendations from the review into the private security industry, including streamlining the licensing system and increasing enforcement presence.

Technology has been, and will continue to, play an important part in how we operate.

We will work with our partners to explore the threats and opportunities presented by emerging technologies to find ways to enhance the safety of the Victorian community.

Subject to national agreement, we will support the implementation of a national firearms register.

To develop and maintain strong partnerships across community, government, and business, we will:

• engage partners to support the design, function and cost of a national firearms register
• support a health-led response to public drunkenness with reduced police involvement
• support a health-led response to mental health crisis with reduced police involvement
• continue the roadside drug testing program to test 150,000 motorists each year
• continue to provide a targeted joint response to high-risk young people in areas of high need through the provision of an Embedded Youth Outreach Program.