11.10.1 Overview of Advices

Department's responsibility to inform the veteran community

DVA has a responsibility to inform the veteran community of its rights and obligations as clearly and concisely as possible. Providing information in plain English using a simple format and issuing as few letters as possible are seen as the fundamental elements in meeting that responsibility.

Income support advices

The majority of income support advices are produced by the Document Generation System (DOCGEN). DOCGEN is a paragraph based system that stores different advice paragraphs. The advice letters are made up of a combination of these paragraphs that are selected according to an individual's circumstances. The DOCGEN produces:

• daily advices, and

• periodic advices (ie. British pension & super variation advices, fortnightly processing, d — eath p — rocessing s — ystem).

The income support standard letters are nationally agreed ad hoc letters. They are standard across all DVA State Offices, manually generated by examiners and relate to income support matters only.    

Veterans' compensation advices

The Compensation Claims Processing System (CCPS) generates letters and questionnaires related to the investigation and determination of claims and applications for disability or war widow's/widower's pensions. The veterans' compensation standard letters are not generated by the CCPS. They are manually generated letters in Microsoft Word format, written and maintained by the individual states to assist in processing of less common scenarios.