OIG Promotes ALJ Production Standards

From a recently released report of Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

We found that ODAR's ability to process projected hearing requests and address the growing backlog of cases will continue to be negatively impacted by the caseload performance of some ALJs if their status quo performance levels continue. To ensure claimants receive their hearing decisions as soon as possible and to be good stewards of the American taxpayer's funds, SSA must ensure that hearing requests are processed within acceptable timeframes and the backlog of cases is reduced to an appropriate level. To do so, SSA should establish a performance accountability process that allows ALJ performance to be addressed when it falls below an acceptable level. ...

[T]he APA does not prevent disciplinary actions against ALJs. In fact, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) stated in the Matter of Chocallo, "[t]he fact that an [ALJ] carries out his/her duties in a hearing room rather than an office does not provide an impenetrable shield from appraisal of performance." ...

It is imperative that ALJs process cases at an acceptable level to reduce the emotional and financial impact of long processing times for the thousands of claimants awaiting decisions on their appeals. To ensure claimants receive timely and accurate decisions, ODAR management must have Agency support to establish a performance accountability process that maintains ALJ qualified decisional independence but holds ALJs accountable for reasonable levels of performance. ...

The whole thrust of the report is that Social Security would have no backlog if the lowest producing Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) would just produce more decisions. Basically, the backlog is the fault of those lazy ALJs, not the fault of Congress or the White House or the Commissioner of Social Security. This is despite the fact that ALJ productivity has increased significantly over the years and despite the fact that the number of ALJs has not come close to keeping pace with the growth in the number of claimants requesting ALJ hearings.

Inevitably, there is a bell shaped curve of ALJ productivity. No matter how much the average increases, there are always going to be some ALJs who produce below the average and some who produce above the average. Essentially, this report is arguing that we must eliminate this bell shaped curve and force all ALJs to produce whatever number of decisions is convenient for Social Security management, whether that number is reasonable or unreasonable.