The Victorian Government welcomes the Inspector-General for Emergency Management’s (IGEM) Review of incident management teams: accreditation and rostering. The review’s findings and recommendations support the emergency management sector’s strategic direction to improve both the sector’s capability and capacity, and our overall operational model across the state.
The sector recognises the need to thoroughly review and strategically plan for the future workforce capability, capacity, infrastructure, and assets, and look for opportunities to create efficiencies and cost savings. With the development of the Strategic Action Plan (SAP) in 2015, the sector now has a common vision and has set strategic priorities directly related to its workforce capability and capacity among other priorities.
Incident Management Teams (IMTs) are required at all levels of an emergency - incident, regional and state. The review focuses on incident management for class 1 emergencies including major fire, flood, and storm.
As observed in the review, since the events of Black Saturday in 2009 and the 2010-11 floods, the sector has made significant progress towards establishing a comprehensive and integrated development model for major incidents, including a transparent accreditation framework to manage development pathways.
The sector’s IMT training approach is now uniform in content, adaptable to all emergencies and is not hazard specific. This ultimately provides greater experience and capability across the sector and organically increases capacity across both major and non-major emergencies. However, there is a further need to expand across all classes of emergencies to better meet community needs and to capitalise on expertise across the state, particularly with rapid on-set and unprecedented events like Thunderstorm Asthma.
The review confirms the challenges identified by the sector’s learning and development teams, that the current training model and platform, has become unsustainable with no secure funding source, is heavily reliant on face-to-face training, and does not provide an efficient end-to-end resolution to effectively manage development, accreditation, and utilisation. In addition it is not agile and responsive to changing environments and community needs in the future.
The Government supports in principle the recommendations of the IGEM’s review and has asked Emergency Management Victoria to lead the further work required to develop a sustainable IMT training and development model for the sector.
Read the IGEM Review of incident management teams: accreditation and rostering. (External link)
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The department acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Custodians of the land and acknowledges and pays respect to their Elders, past and present.