Hello AFCA Members,

Please review the following message from Assistant Fire Commissioner Phil Rowe regarding a project aimed at updating the AESM and FSESM Medals Database. These programs are significant to our fire service, and your assistance in this endeavor would be greatly beneficial to all involved.

Thank you!

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Greetings Fire Service Leaders,

As part of our medal program review, our office is completing a clean-up/organization of the AESM and FSESM medals database. For this to occur, we need the assistance of the stakeholder organizations.

Background

The medals database was created in late 2021 with the intention of tracking the medal submissions more efficiently. Since its inception in 2005, the medal program submissions have all been on spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were imported into the database which created many duplicate and incomplete files. Some examples are:

1. Multiple organization names. Submissions for departments are being sent in with different variations of names. The clean up started with 2878 different organization names.

EX: Albertaville Fire, Albertaville Fire Services, Albertaville Fire Department, Town of Albertaville Fire, Albertaville Fire Rescue etc etc

2. Multiple medals issued to same emergency services worker. (IE: nominated with a fire department but also worked full-time for EMS or Bylaw services and nominated through them also)
3. Different names for the same person (IE: Joseph Smith & Joe Smith)Without disclosing the name, 1 name has 17 different people with the same name. Middle names will be MANDATORY on all future nominations.
4. Nominations for the same person from different departments. (IE: 12yr award with Town A and 12yr + 22yr bar with City B)
5. Nominations for communities that no longer exist. (IE: Village departments now under the control of an MD or County)

As a side note, we have just under 13000 medal recipients in the database with many, many duplicates.

New Processes

1. New AESM form: The new ASEM form and guidelines will be released in the near future.
2. The new form will allow for multiple nominations on 1 form
3. The nominator can be anyone in the organization but ALL nominations MUST have approval of someone with signing authority with the organization. Ex: A Captain could be the nominator if the organization has deemed that person responsible for such task. The nomination form MUST be signed off by a Fire Chief or Deputy Fire Chief at minimum.
4. If the Fire Chief is being nominated, then the sign off MUST be a Director or CAO/Mayor.

With this change, a submission approval letter will no longer be needed. However, the dates of service MUST be identified on the form.

Website updates:

The medals website will be updated and include sample FSESM completed forms and letters. Incomplete forms and letters account for 35% return of applications resulting in delayed processing.

Virtual town hall: I will conduct a couple of virtual town halls to explain the process to assist you in proper completion.

Moving Forward

1. Requesting ALLfire services provide an official name for your organization.
2. If you are the nominating authority for a service area/region, please reply back with the name of the nominating authority and which departments/stations you are responsible for. (Ex: Parkland County Fire-Seba Beach, Rocky View County – Irricana, Etc)
3. Once the data base is cleaned up, the intention is to supply each department with a history report of all nominations for your records which would include the unique AESM ID# for each recipient.

You can send an email to [email protected] with the:

SUBJ Heading: AESM-Database (Organization Name)

1. Official Organization Name
2. Stations/departments responsible for:

I appreciate everyone’s help on this. I look forward to ensuring a smooth efficient process to recognize our Alberta Emergency Services members.

Cheers!

Phil Rowe, Assistant Fire Commissioner

Community & Technical Support Branch

Alberta Municipal Affairs

Edmonton, Alberta

[email protected]