Appendices

Defence's mission is to defend Australia and its national interests. By its nature, Defence provides very few services direct to the Australian public; instead it serves all Australians through, and at the direction of, the Government of the day and the Parliament.

The services that Defence does provide include assistance to the civil community (in times of natural disaster), participating in public events, conducting recruiting activities and managing recruitment offices, and responding to a range of correspondence on many Defence issues.

The Defence Service Charter sets out our standards in service delivery. While the service charter is aimed at ensuring quality service to the public, we also apply the standards in our work with our colleagues and other agencies.

Defence reports annually to the Minister for Defence on the extent to which it has met the performance standards relating to the charter. The following is a full account of the report provided to the Minister for 2005–06.

Performance Standards and Monitoring

Defence commits to the following standards in its service charter:

• act on a request from the public in a professional and courteous manner;
• provide accurate information;
• respect privacy and sensitivities;
• respond to phone calls, faxes or emails within two working days; and
• reply to correspondence within 15 working days.

Defence's Groups have systems in place to track compliments and complaints.

Consistent with Australian Standard 4269 on Complaints Handling, Defence only reports on complaints/compliments from members of the public rather than internal complaints. Complaints are reported only if they relate to services provided (that is, the process), not to decisions made.

In most cases, written complaints referred to first assistant secretary and military equivalents or above are recorded.

Where a complaint is resolved at the director level or below, no information is recorded for service charter purposes.

Performance in 2005–06

The Defence Service Charter remains available electronically on the internal and external Defence websites.

Copies of the service charter are made available to the public through the Defence Community Organisation, Defence Force Recruiting offices, and civilian recruitment areas.

Customer Feedback and Complaints

The Defence Service Charter provides the public with information on how to make a complaint or provide feedback, together with contact details. Members of the public are encouraged to phone or write, in the first instance, to the relevant area of Defence or the supervisor of the area, and then if necessary, the Ministers or the Parliamentary Secretary, or their local Member of Parliament or Senator. Defence also has a dedicated email address defence.servicecharter@defence.gov.au. In addition, members of the public can contact the Commonwealth and Defence Force Ombudsman.

The majority of complaints were resolved well within the stated performance standard of 15 working days, with many being resolved within seven working days. Complaints of a more complex nature were generally resolved within 28 days. Some issues, because of their ongoing nature, remained unresolved. The most common complaints related to aircraft noise, military justice, environmental management and general personnel issues.

The most common compliments Groups received were for the overall level of Defence assistance to the civil community, especially in relation to ADF personnel attendance and displays at public/charity events, the issuing of medals and the professional conduct of service men and women on operations.

Table 6.16 Complaints Made to Defence 2001–02 to 2005–06⁽¹⁾

	2001–02	2002–03	2003–04	2004–05	2005–06
Number of complaints	691	490	659	755	603

Responsiveness to Ministerial Correspondence

For responsiveness to ministerial correspondence, see the statistics provided in Responsiveness to Ministers in Chapter One—Overview.

Payment of Accounts

During 2005–06, Defence invested effort in improving the long term efficiency and timeliness of its accounts payment process. The established indicator used to measure the performance of the payment process is the proportion of invoices paid within the payment terms (usually 30 days from receipt of a correctly presented invoice and receipt of the goods or services). Defence aims to exceed the government benchmark for 'due date' performance level of 90 per cent of invoices paid on time.

As in 2004–05, continued increase in the usage of the Defence Purchasing Card and the Defence Travel Card helped to improve transactional speed and efficiency during 2005–06 and further gains in efficiency are expected in this area in 2006–07.

Although the introduction of the Invoice Scanning and Imaging System (ISIS) in late 2004 has generated improvements in due date performance and in overall compliance of the payment process, staffing issues and education shortcomings for both vendors and Defence staff were experienced in 2005–06 resulting in delays in paying some invoices.

These difficulties resulted in an overall reduction in due date performance for Defence in 2005–06 compared to the previous year.

A strategy is in place to deal with the lessons learned from the initial introduction of ISIS and ensure significant improvements to the payment process. Several campaigns targeting vendors, Defence purchasers and procurement areas will be undertaken over the next 12 months and significant improvements in the due date performance are expected in 2006–07.

The table below shows Defence's payment performance over the last four years.

Table 6.17 Accounts Paid by Due Date

	2002–03	2003–04	2004–05	2005–06(2)
Number of accounts paid(1)	1,223,773	1,216,216	1,386,677	1,114,716
Accounts paid by due date	1,026,383	1,037,245	1,222,999	922,653
Percentage of accounts paid by due date (%)	83.9	85.3	88.2	82.8

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