DH&A staff has developed a new processes to ensure that permanent and reserve members receive their awards in a much more timely manner.
An automated PMKeyS system captures and reports information relating to eligible permanent ADF members. This system produces lists of ADF personnel who have reached a long service medal milestone, and have not already received their award.
Occasionally, however, a member may be missed if they have broken service or non-effective service. The member would then need to call or e-mail DH&A. The automated system is only capable of capturing DFSM/DLSM recipients who are currently serving permanent members.
In the case of Reserves, there is a range of different qualifying requirements for effective service relating to specific periods of time for each of the Services, which can only be gathered manually. The lack of electronically available reserve data, such as training days, parades attended etc, significantly impacts on the time required for DH&A to assess a persons entitlement to a long service award.
To avoid unnecessary backlogs in the Reserve assessment process, it is a requirement that all applicants for Reserve awards provide full details of training days, parades attended etc for each year of service by enlistment year.
This will significantly assist DH&A in this process and will ultimately enable applications to be processed in a much more timely manner. Further, those Reservists who have previously made application and are still awaiting notification could considerably assist DH&A by providing this information in support of their application. This will significantly accelerate the process for the delivery of any entitlement they may have. Although this is regrettable, there is no easy means through which DH&A can gather this information and, with resources limited and workloads increasing, we need to ask applicants to assist us in this process.
A common myth surrounding long service awards is that they should be available for award on the day the milestone is reached. This is simply not possible. Once a member has been recognised as being eligible (which can only happen after they have completed the required period of service), the Governor-General must individually approve each entitlement to the award. The Governor-General does not have the power to approve the award prior to the eligible service being completed. In most cases, approval would occur by the calendar month following the milestone date for the members.
Once approved, the medals and recipient information are sent to our contracting company for engraving and despatch to the individuals. The process of outsourcing this task has significantly improved the despatch times.
To further assist DH&A in the more effective delivery of their medals, members should ensure that their details, especially unit address details, remain up to date on PMKeyS. Out of date information or information that is missing on PMKeyS, is a prime factor that contributes to some of the delay in the award's delivery.
Recent enhancements to PMKeyS Self Service now allow ADF members to view their award progress, including the schedule number, not only for long service but all other awards, under My Qualifications' on the PMKeyS Self-Service page.
In certain circumstances to recognise all of a member's service the DFSM, RFD or RFM maybe exchanged for the DLSM. ADF members should contact DH&A to discuss their circumstances regarding exchange eligiblity.
Web page last updated 9 July 2009