The Canberra public has been slow to adopt online reporting of crime, with just 37 per cent of property damage incidents recorded via the online portal.
Of these, almost half the reports were related to vehicle damage. General damage to premises made up 21 per cent and graffiti incidents 10 per cent.
The $400,000 online reporting project began in the ACT at the start of the 2022-23 financial year and during that time, 662 property damage and vandalism reports were received through the secure platform.
Of the online reports that were accepted and verified through the online portal, one-third were assessed as requiring police to physically attend and make more inquiries.
The portal was developed to better manage available police resources and an expectation in the ACT that police would attend every minor crime, even though the chances of obtaining any useful evidence were slim.
At the launch of the portal, deputy chief police officer Doug Boudry reminded the public "forensics resources were finite".
"Obviously if we see a range of [criminal] matters happen in a particular area, we will dispatch a patrol," Assistant Commissioner Boudry said.
"We want to make sure we dedicate those [forensic resources] to our highest priority matters.
"However, if we've got a spate of minor property offences that might require forensics, we can deploy them [forensics] if we think there is value in that.
"Sometimes people just want to report the crime not for a police response but because they might need it for insurance purposes."
The online police portal can be used to report property damage and vandalism and historical sex offences. The reporting of collisions, which by law must be within 24 hours, links to the Access Canberra portal.
The police portal is also where businesses can report petrol drive-offs.
Each report generates an incident number.
The ACT was one of the last jurisdictions in the country to introduce online reporting, although it has had a Crime Stoppers online reporting function for years.
Police say that property theft - such as stolen bicycles, power tools and household items - was most likely to be the next crime type to be reportable online.
However, theft is often linked to burglary and recovered stolen property may contain valuable forensic evidence which can link offenders to the crimes they commit, often over a period of time and across multiple locations.
Streamlining the reporting process without losing potential important evidence could prove a sticking point.
Meanwhile, the ACT government is committed to introducing digital drivers' licences this year, after millions of people in NSW have had them for almost three years.
"Other states are conducting trials of digital drivers' licences, such as Queensland and Victoria, and we are working closely with them to understand the learnings from these trials before the ACT government invests in developing our own," an ACT government spokesperson said.
"States and territories have now agreed on a standard for digital drivers' licence that, once implemented, will operate the same way across Australia. This will ensure that as ACT moves to digital drivers' licences, we can meet the needs of Canberrans as well as interstate visitors."
