Let me pick out one last item from the February 14 Social Security Subcommittee hearing. This is from the written statement prepared by Commissioner Astrue:
Since 2001, SSA has improved productivity on average by 2.5 percent per year for a cumulative improvement of 13.1 percent.
The problem with this statement is that the productivity increases talked about by Commissioner Astrue resemble the productivity increases under the old Soviet Union's five year plans. That which was being measured increased, while everything that was not being measured went to hell, making the reported productivity gains meaningless.
In the old Soviet Union, a shoe factory might be required under a five year plan to increase its productivity by, let us say, 13.1% and would meet that goal, but the shoes made would be ugly, uncomfortable to wear and so poorly constructed that they fell apart quickly, making the productivity gain meaningless. The same sort of thing is happening at Social Security. For instance, more telephone calls are answered at teleservice centers -- but the people answering the calls are under huge pressure to get the callers off the line as quickly as possible so they can meet their productivity goals, so they often fail to help the callers, leading to frustration for Social Security claimants, repeated telephone calls and more in person visits to Social Security field offices. Probably, Social Security is not measuring how completely and accurately their teleservice center employees deal with telephone inquiries and they are certainly not factoring that into their productivity figures. At Social Security's field offices appeals filed by claimants are piling up rapidly because field office personnel lack the time needed to do the data entry required to process the appeals, but no one is measuring that or factoring it into the productivity figures. If anything, delays in processing appeals at the field offices make the delays at the hearing offices look less bad than they are. In many different ways this sort of thing is happening all over Social Security. Productivity is increasing rapidly according to Social Security's official statistics, yet the error rates, which are not being measured, are going through the roof, as are the backlogs in everything that is not being measured or factored into the gross productivity numbers that Social Security reports to the world.
In the old Soviet Union, a shoe factory might be required under a five year plan to increase its productivity by, let us say, 13.1% and would meet that goal, but the shoes made would be ugly, uncomfortable to wear and so poorly constructed that they fell apart quickly, making the productivity gain meaningless. The same sort of thing is happening at Social Security. For instance, more telephone calls are answered at teleservice centers -- but the people answering the calls are under huge pressure to get the callers off the line as quickly as possible so they can meet their productivity goals, so they often fail to help the callers, leading to frustration for Social Security claimants, repeated telephone calls and more in person visits to Social Security field offices. Probably, Social Security is not measuring how completely and accurately their teleservice center employees deal with telephone inquiries and they are certainly not factoring that into their productivity figures. At Social Security's field offices appeals filed by claimants are piling up rapidly because field office personnel lack the time needed to do the data entry required to process the appeals, but no one is measuring that or factoring it into the productivity figures. If anything, delays in processing appeals at the field offices make the delays at the hearing offices look less bad than they are. In many different ways this sort of thing is happening all over Social Security. Productivity is increasing rapidly according to Social Security's official statistics, yet the error rates, which are not being measured, are going through the roof, as are the backlogs in everything that is not being measured or factored into the gross productivity numbers that Social Security reports to the world.
This is clearly from an outside viewpoint. the TSC's teleservice centers do not track how many calls an agent takes, its not a stat that is tracked at a local or even regional level. What we do look at is agent busy rate (ie how much of thier paid time are they on the phone) and every unit is required to listen in on individual TSR's phone calls on a regular basis with formal observations that go into thier 7-B file. The problem with the accuracy has more to do with the age group of most of the agents then the timeframe. 800# opened in 1989, most of the people were hired off the street, no education requirements, or prior experience. most of these agents are nearing retirement. the newer agents say within the last 5 years are college educated and thier resources at work are vastly different. many of the old timers are using stricly SSA's PCOM mainframe program instead of the CHIP (customer help and Info Prog) which leads to more accurate answers. Since accuracy is measured internally at the local regional and national level you can tell which TSC's make CHIP useage mandatory. The difference in level of service is the agent a CHIP user or not.
ReplyDeleteI am with SSA and I agree with it to a point. I work in a FO, and I didn't know how TSRs/SPIKEs were measured, but accuracy with the 800# is a problem. I can't tell you how many times I have helped someone who started with "The 800# told me..." and ended with wrong information. Of course, how many claimants SAY they were told, vs how many WERE told?
ReplyDeleteIn my FO, the number or duration of incoming calls are rarely monitored.
We've got ONE SR on the phone each day. On a day with no downtime, no excessively talkative or irate people, and no interruptions from staff, you can easily field 80 to 100 calls.
It's frustrating. We've got a lot of people waiting on hold, because they either didn't want to wait for the 800# or fear bad information, or the 800# told them to call their local office. The FO usually has to deal with the "difficult" cases where there is a problem with the checks or the person wants information about local FO processing that the 800# has no access to. (ie: appeals backlogs, SSN processing)
We in the FO try to handle as much on the phone as possible, because it decreases in-office traffic, but the longer we are on the phone, the more people don't get through which leads to higher in-office traffic. So we sometimes rush to take more calls, but then people STILL come in because their problem still needs a follow-up.
It is also definitely true that "target" workloads take a priority in the FO over other work. Certain things that aren't tracked will back up for ages, but if someone isn't specifically keeping their eye on it, it can and will slip under the radar, and the "productivity" reports still look great.