... [I]n FY [Fiscal Year] 2011 [which ended September 30, 2010], while we received unprecedented new workloads, Congress cut our budget more deeply than in any year of the previous two decades. Congress also rescinded a sizable portion of our IT [Information Technology] carryover funding, which is our best mechanism for improving productivity. With staff reductions caused by hiring freezes and attrition, our work force is contracting rapidly, field offices are consolidating, and we are struggling to maintain recent levels of service. When I leave office in 2013, the agency will have about the same number of employees that we had when I arrived in 2007, even though our workloads have increased dramatically. Since FY 2007, retirement and survivor claims have increased by 26 percent and disability claims have increased by over 31 percent. ...
Let me be clear that our ALJs’ [Administrative Law Judges'] improved productivity has not resulted in more allowances. Our ALJs are not meeting our productivity goals by “paying down the backlog,” as has sometimes been alleged. In fact, our hearing level allowance rate dropped over 4 percentage points this past year. ...
The sheer volume of work our employees handle is incredible. For instance, in FY 2011, more than 45 million people visited our field offices across the Nation. Despite the high volume of visitors, we reduced wait times in our field offices by more than 9 percent from FY 2010. [Notice that he's talking about last fiscal year. The numbers this fiscal year probably aren't as good]...
Last year, callers to our 800 Number had the shortest wait time and lowest busy signal rates ever. We reduced the time spent waiting for an agent by 45 percent, from 326 seconds in FY 2008 to 180 seconds in FY 2011. [But again he's talking about last year. Things aren't going so well this year as we'll see below.] We cut our busy rate by over 70 percent since FY 2008. We attribute much of our improved performance to hiring additional teleservice representatives in FY 2009 and FY 2010, along with several technological advancements to make our 800-number more efficient. ...
Regardless of our technology improvements, under current funding we project that our 800-number service will deteriorate significantly because we will not have a sufficient number of people to answer calls. We expect that busy signals will rise from 3 percent in FY 2011 to 6 percent in FY 2012. Our average speed of answer will increase from 180 seconds in FY 2011 to 285 seconds in FY 2012.
Overall service also will deteriorate in our field offices and processing centers because staffing losses do not happen evenly across the country. This year alone, nearly one-third of our field offices have experience more than 10 percent attrition, and 15 offices have lost over 30 percent of their staff.
