Commissioner Barnhart at House Social Security Subcommittee

Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart is testifying today before the House Social Security Subcommittee on her Disability Service Improvement plan. There is little new in her prepared remarks. The following is a new, however:

I also established a new Office of Quality Performance to manage the Agency’s newly developed and still evolving integrated quality system which I believe will improve our disability determination process, as well as other program areas such as the Social Security retirement program and the SSI age-based program. The new Office of Quality Performance will manage a new quality system that includes both in-line and end-of-line quality review throughout the new DSI process. The Office of Quality Performance will be able quickly to identify problem areas, implement corrective actions, and identify related training as we implement the new DSI process.

The problem is that she gives no explanation of how the Office of Quality Performance is different from its predecessor, the Disability Quality Branch. Barnhart has already changed the name of Social Security's Office of Hearings and Appeals to the Office of Disability Appeals and Reviews without making any meaningful change in its operations. Without more information, it is tempting to label this change as being just as meaningless.

She goes on in her prepared remarks to say:

So far, we have developed major new computer systems to support the DSI initiative. We have performed all of the personnel and hiring work necessary to make sure that we have the new employees in their new positions, properly trained, in time to perform their new DSI duties when implementation begins. We are working to ensure that effective training is prepared and presented to every employee who will be involved with the new disability determination process. Although we do not have the same kind of personnel or hiring issues at the hearing level as we do for other levels, we do have systems needs unique to the hearing level, and we are currently working to ensure that the necessary computer systems are in place by the time the first DSI claim reaches the hearing level.

The report that the major computer systems for DSI have been developed is reassuring, but the fact that this statement is coupled with a statement that "all of the personnel and hiring work" for the Reviewing Officer (RO) position has been performed is unsettling. It is clear that all of the hiring work for the RO position has not been done since the RO jobs have only recently been advertised. It is unlikely that anyone has been hired as an RO or RO supervisor so far. Clerical positions to support the ROs have not even been announced yet. She only states that Social Security is "working" on preparing training, which suggests that Social Security has much further to go in this area.