Appendix

Next steps

The VAAF is Victoria’s state plan for Closing the Gap and achieving better outcomes for Aboriginal Victorians by undertaking systemic and structural transformation to enable self-determination.

At the national level, the Victorian Government continues to work with all jurisdictions and the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations to develop a National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

As part of these conversations, we will work to ensure the National Agreement on Closing the Gap complements the VAAF so that government efforts at both the state and national level are aligned.

Future annual reports will include information about how Victoria is tracking against its commitments under the VAAF and the new National Agreement on Closing the Gap. This will ensure we are providing consistent information on the Victorian Government’s efforts to improve outcomes and are accountable to Aboriginal Victorians at both the state and national level.

About this Report and the collation of data

This Report provides the latest available information about how the Victorian Government is progressing against the six domains and 111 measures in the VAAF. The majority of data reported provides an assessment of progress from 2008 (or closest to) until 2018-19. Where data is available, the baseline year is 2008 as this was the year in which the National Indigenous Reform Agreement was established.

As a first preference, the data has been sourced from annual administrative collections. If this is not available, survey data has been used, for example for most non-service related measures not directly collected and reported on by the Victorian Government. This data has primarily been sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) and Health Survey (NATSIHS) for Aboriginal Victorians; and General Social Survey (GSS) and National Health Survey (NHS) for comparison with non-Aboriginal Victorians. The use of survey data means the latest year of available data varies across the Report, particularly given the latest NATSISS and GSS data is from 2014-15.

It should be noted that some of the data reported against the VAAF measures do not directly align with the measure definition due to the limitation of data published in the public domain.

Improving Aboriginal data quality and accessibility

Government is striving to improve the quality, accessibility and use of Aboriginal data. As a first step, we are working to enhance Aboriginal status across a range of outcome measures used in the VAAF. This is critical because Aboriginality is often missing or reported inconsistently in key datasets which inhibits the government’s ability to understand and accurately report on how Aboriginal Victorians are faring on key outcomes.

Government is also working on the commitment in the VAAF to improve data access, transparency and narration through developing a data dashboard to publish disaggregated data from the annual Report. We are in the preliminary design phase and will seek to implement what we heard during community engagement on the VAAF; better data access and a more empowering narrative. It is anticipated the data dashboard will be available from 2020.

Glossary