The State election will be held on Saturday 26 November 2022. During the caretaker period (commencing 6.00 pm on Tuesday 1 November 2022) content will only be added to this website in line with the caretaker conventions.
Board numbers and demographics
Facts, figures and visuals on public sector boards
Unless stated otherwise, this workforce data shows you numbers as at June 2022.
This data doesn’t show the machinery of government changes that came into effect on 1 January 2023.
You can use the dropdown menu at the bottom of each chart to filter the data sets.
For some visuals, we give you a breakdown of the data by:
Victorian Public Service (VPS): the 9 departments, Victoria Police (VPS employees) and 46 authorities and offices defined to be public service employers under the Public Administration Act 2004
Public sector industry groups: all other public sector bodies outside the VPS that have a public function, grouped together by industry.
Overall public sector workforce: VPS and public sector industries combined.
The industry groups are:
creative industries, finance, transport and other
government schools
police and emergency services
public health care
TAFE and other education
water and land management.
At the end of this page, find Excel datasets for June 2018 to June 2022.
82% of board members volunteer their time (excludes members of school councils)
55% of members on major boards are women
77% of board members reside in regional and rural Victoria (excludes members of school councils).
Role of public sector boards
Public sector boards are responsible for the strategic direction, governance and risk management of Victorian public sector entities in line with the relevant legislation.
They can include boards of governance of public entities and advisory bodies.
Board members are senior leaders of the public sector.
Number of board members by portfolio department and portfolio group
Gender of board members
In March 2015, the government made a Women on Boards commitment to increase the number of women on boards. The scope of this commitment was expanded in 2018 and again in 2021.
The refreshed commitment states that:
over 50% of new appointments must be women for boards and portfolios that have less than 50% women
boards and portfolios with 50% women must maintain that number with future appointments.
The commitment applies to Victorian courts and all boards except:
statutory offices or officers
small Crown land committees of management
unpaid cemetery trusts
school councils.
Women on major boards
Major boards are the 333 larger public entity boards and exclude:
boards with all elected or ex officio members (a person who’s on a board because of their role or status)
equality portfolio boards
most advisory boards
school councils
small cemetery trusts
small rural hospitals
small Crown land committees of management.
From 2015 to June 2022, women on major boards have gone up from 39% to 55%.
Women’s representation has improved in most portfolio groups. For major boards, women remain under-represented only on boards in these groups:
Planning at 36%
Transport and Ports at 42%
Premier and Cabinet at 45%
Treasury and Finance at 48%
Agriculture at 48%
Racing Tourism, Sport and Major Events at 48%.
See the portfolio breakdown in ourdata set.
Women on all boards
Women on all boards have gone up from 36% at June 2018 to 40% at June 2022. This doesn’t include school councils where the data is unavailable.
There are low rates of representation of women on boards in these ministerial portfolio groups:
Cemeteries at 31%
Planning at 37%
Transport and Ports at 37%
Committees of Crown Land Management at 37%.
These 4 categories make up 1,590 or 45% of all boards and 10,653 or 34% of all board members. These contribute to the overall representation of women on boards.
Most cemetery trust and Crown land committee of management boards:
are based in rural areas
don’t employ staff
have members nominated from local communities or are long-term members
manage small assets.
From June 2018 to June 2022:
women on cemetery trusts boards have gone up from 28% to 31%
women on Crown land committees of management boards have remained at around 37%.
Age of board members
The age of 81% of all board members, mainly from school councils and small committees of management, isn’t available.
Percentage of board members by diversity group, location and volunteer status
Percentage breakdown of board members:
2% identify as a person with disability
2% identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander
19% identify as culturally or linguistically diverse
77% are regional and rural residents
82% are volunteers.
Diversity data, location and volunteer status aren’t collected for school councils.
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander data and culturally and linguistically diverse status data aren’t collected for small committees of management.
We define culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) when a person:
was born in a country other than Australia
has one or more parents born in a country other than Australia
speaks a primary language at home that’s not English
speaks another language at home that’s not English, or
self-identified as CALD.
Data set
This data set covers June 2018 to June 2022.
We publish board and board member profile data from over 3,500 boards and about 31,000 board members.
We source this data from the Government Appointments and Public Entities Database (GAPED).
Board and board member profile
This file shows the number of Victorian public sector boards and the number of board members for each portfolio department and ministerial portfolio.
The file also has a list of Victorian public sector boards showing:
classification
status as a major board
status as an employer
number of board members.
It also has a profile of board members for each department and ministry portfolio from June 2018 to 2022 showing numbers by:
gender
age
residential location of metropolitan Melbourne or regional Victoria
volunteer status
diversity groups of board members who are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, have disability and are culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD).
In the file, we’ve grouped school councils, small cemetery trusts and small land management committees together.
