My firm sent a reconsideration request to the Rocky Mount, NC District Office on July 31, 2007 in a case I will call "Victoria E." Ms. E's reconsideration request was not logged in at the District Office until November 28, 2007, almost four months after it reached the office. The case file has still not reached North Carolina Disability Determination Services. Ms. E's appeal is not being considered because it cannot reach the people who must work on it.
Is Ms. E's case typical? No. Most cases are not delayed this badly, but there are too many that are. Is this the fault of lazy, incompetent bureaucrats? No. They are just overwhelmed with work.
As far as I know, no one is even keeping track of this sort of backlog. This sort of backlog must be nearly invisible to Social Security employees who do not work in Field Offices. Is Michael Astrue aware, even vaguely, of this reality? I cannot say. We will get some idea of whether Astrue understands the severity of his agency's staffing problems when we see his budget request for the Social Security Administration for fiscal year 2009. I believe that will be available in late January.
Is Ms. E's case typical? No. Most cases are not delayed this badly, but there are too many that are. Is this the fault of lazy, incompetent bureaucrats? No. They are just overwhelmed with work.
As far as I know, no one is even keeping track of this sort of backlog. This sort of backlog must be nearly invisible to Social Security employees who do not work in Field Offices. Is Michael Astrue aware, even vaguely, of this reality? I cannot say. We will get some idea of whether Astrue understands the severity of his agency's staffing problems when we see his budget request for the Social Security Administration for fiscal year 2009. I believe that will be available in late January.
5 comments:
"Paper" backlogs as you described can only be measured anecdotally. So if you have a stack 10 inches high, then that represents X number of people. This type of backlog isn't tracked. Instead of submitting paper appeals, you are better off using iAppeals (just released) or having the claimant walk in and insist on electronically filing the appeal. Then it is at least in a control system to be tracked.
While not "typical" for the stated type of case, it is what I would call "not uncommon", and crosses many categories of workloads. The unstated, invisible-to-the public backlog of work in SSA field offices dwarfs the highly visible but still-unaddressed hearings backlogs.
What were you doing for 4 months? Not much follow up on your part to not check on what's going on for 4 months.
How do you know they didn't check what was going on for four months? All the follow up calls in the world can't make Social Security do anything. Anybody with any sense about how this stuff really works would know that and not ask such a dumb question.
As a field office employee, we have to make periodic reports about our workloads and have to explain why some cases are taking longer than the goal. However, no one ever asks me about my pending reconsiderations. I have had some that either need to go to DDS or have come back from DDS as allowances and local management does not track how long it takes. Reconsiderations are not invisible once the appeal is entered into the system, but since there is no goal that my management has to report to upper management about, those cases go on the back burner and simmer until I find time or make time to pay the case. Management will say that the cases are important, but does nothing to ensure that that the work gets done. As an FO employee, I learned early to keep a short list of what I have to report on to my supervisor, and the recons are not even on the list.
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