Apr 7, 2017

ODAR Numbers

     Below is the Workload and Performance Summary for Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) for the month ending February 24, 2017. Click on it to view it full size. The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) published this in its newsletter, which isn't available online.
     I noticed a number of things:
  • New appeals are declining
  • Overtime went up greatly starting in December
  • Backlogs are going up
  • Senior attorney decisions are minimal (see the footnote of the summary)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Huh. What happened to 400 judges between January and February?

Anonymous said...

The plan for the back half of the FY is still to hire a three-digit number of ALJs.

Anonymous said...

I agree with 9:08. How could the number of ALJs both on duty and available drop ~300 in one month???

Anonymous said...

That's an easy one to answer, they are the Secret Black Ops Troops of the SSA Strike Force put together by Garmon! :) Have a great weekend!

Anonymous said...

2:11 - My guess is they took HOCALJ and any other management ALJs out of the report. The desire to do so was announced a couple months ago, ostensibly to allow HOCALJs to hold fewer hearings and not sway office productivity numbers. That being said, in this report the ALJ productivity rate jumped while the available ALJ count dropped. It seems a class of ALJs was removed from the report, but their dispositions were averaged among the remaining ALJs. Either poor spreadsheet math, or someone wanted to make ALJs look more productive.

Anonymous said...

Numbers take additional time to update. If you check online now, the numbers have been fixed.

Drawing premature conclusions without knowing the whole picture is why misinformation is spread around.

Anonymous said...

Drats! I was really pulling for the Spec OPs theory.

Anonymous said...

Hiring more ALJ's is not the solution. Too many of them don't do their jobs.