Feb 26, 2007

NADE Newsletter For Winter 2007

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of workers employed in making disability determinations for Social Security, has issued its Winter 2007 newsletter.

It is interesting to note that the NADE president, Chuck Schimmels, recently spoke to the Association of Administrative Law Judges.

On another vein, here is a quote from the newsletter about eDIB, the paperless system that Social Security is struggling to implement:
eDib is still a work in progress and requires ongoing refinements, upgrades and improvements frequently needed to make the system work as efficiently and effectively as possible. The impact on the system as a whole when these changes are made is unpredictable, and currently results in a slowing or shutting down of the system, or parts thereof.

Since Disability Determination Services (DDSs) process over 2.5 million cases on an annual basis, any shut down or slow down of the case processing system equates to a significant loss of production capacity.
It is not surprising to hear that implementing a new system is difficult. The thing is that when an agency is struggling with huge backlogs due to inadequate staffing, implementation of a major new system will inevitably make the backlogs worse.

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