From a press release issued by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union, which represents much of Social Security's workforce:
The Social Security Administration recently has tried several new directives for dealing with benefit applicants, including a new system for filing Social Security benefits via the Internet. Some of the new directives already are causing problems for the SSA and applicants alike.The press release ends with this swipe at Social Security's involvement with voter registration:
The new iClaims and Ready Retirement initiatives were designed to streamline the Social Security Administration by moving the public to Internet services, but according the American Federation of Government Employees, it is doing the opposite. “Without an SSA employee adjudicating the claims, we run the risk of fraud and incorrect claims being filed,” said AFGE Council 220 President Witold Skwierczynski.
“It’s not only people who are filling out fraudulent applications, but applicants who just don’t understand the confusing iClaims process and are unknowingly cheating themselves out of their deserved benefits,” said Skwierczynski. “Moving the public over to Internet services short-changes anyone who attempts to use these services and creates a situation where fraud easily can occur. Filing for Social Security benefits is not something easily handled over the Internet, particularly if the applicant is not computer savvy.”
AFGE also is concerned about how the SSA is dealing with the Help America Vote Act. States are required to authenticate new registration applicants using the last four digits of their Social Security number or driver’s license, and match that number to the Social Security database. However, databases are prone to errors such as data entry mistakes which result in spelling mistakes, and switched numbers. Because of this there is now a 28.5 percent error rate with the matches between voter registration records and the SSA database.
This is a huge issue in the field offices. We have been told by management that there is no statistically significant difference between the accuracy of an internet retirement claim and that of one taken by the fo. In fact, those of us who interview claimants who have filed an internet retirement claim have found a nearly 100 percent error rate when we go over the application with them. However, most internet retirement claims are now being cleared with no claimant contact, and soon not even an ssa employee review will be done before the system automatically approves the claims.
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