An Inside View

From the minutes of a May 6-9, 2008 meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel (emphasis added, as well as some explanations and a few comments):

Roger [McDonnell, Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Operations, who was meeting with the Executive Committee of NCSSMA on behalf of the Social Security Administration] stated they are very pleased with the volume of hires and that 2350 out of 3900 went to the field [as opposed to Hearing Offices]. He told us they are trying increase the 800 number staff including those in the DOC [Data Operations Centers]. They have increased 800 number resources to make sure we have enough staff to reduce the busy rates and assist some FOs [Field Offices] with their general inquiry calls. ...

Ready Retirement, the new online retirement application, will be released in September 2008. (Note: the September release is now called i-RRET) This release will be piloted for a few weeks and then implemented nationally. [Notice that they are hardly bothering with piloting. Lack of adequate piloting is a longstanding problem at Social Security and has caused many problems over the years, but management is so sure that new processes are going to work and feel so much urgency to achieve productivity gains that they plow ahead and hope for the best, often creating major problems for the employees who actually have to work with the inadequately piloted processes.] i-RRET will streamline the number of questions and will be in a more user friendly format. The release will only affect the front-end application. They expect that some time in 2010 back-end changes will be made which will allow some of the simplest RSI [Retirement and Survivors Insurance, i.e., not disability] claims to go right into pay. ...

Ron [Mitchell, an Executive Committee member] brought up problems with claims-taking companies and the poor product we get from them. Roger [McDonnell] said that there is another project called Disability Direct which they are developing and which they are hoping will encourage these groups to use the internet for their claims submissions. We asked if we will be creating a new retirement claims- taking workload for local for-profit companies, such as H&R Block. Roger [McDonnell] said they are trying to make all of this so easy that such companies would not be needed. [Note that it appears that he did not answer the question.] ...

The first five months of the FY [Fiscal Year] show that FO [Field Office] productivity is up by 11%, which virtually wipes out our backlog on paper. For the last six months, we were up by 9% (March was down). Roger [McDonnell] speculated that perhaps the rest of the FY will show decreased productivity as much of the increase was linked to claims which may be slowing down in the second half of the FY. ... Bethany [Paradis, Executive Committee member] asked if it would be possible to convert some of our overtime hours to FTE staff. Roger [McDonnell] said it would not be fiscally prudent because as soon as October 1 comes those funds could go away. If that were the case, we would find ourselves needing to layoff those new hires....

There is some speculation that more of the smaller TSCs [Teleservice Centers] may be closed and their staffs relocated to Card Centers ... Action: Greg [Heineman, NCSSMA President] should call Donnell [Roger McDonnell?, who was not present at this point in the meetings] or Linda [McMahon, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Roger McDonnell's boss] directly and ask them why they are not putting replacements into the smaller TSCs. He should try to get as many specific answers as possible. [Note the concern about getting straight talk from Social Security upper management about an office closing issue.]

Much of these minutes was lined through on the NCSSMA Website. I assume this is a technical problem.