NCSSMA Meets With DCO And Commissioner

The Annual Meeting of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, included some high level meetings. Here are some excerpts from the minutes of a meeting with Linda McMahon, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner, Operations (DCO) in late October:

Although there were very high hopes that we would get $50 million above the President’s budget, Linda believes we will be extremely lucky to get the President’s budget, and we could be in a yearlong Continuing Resolution (CR). [It sounds like she had trouble believing that Barack Obama would be elected President. Notice below that Commissioner Astrue was quite a bit more optimistic.] Any new President will walk into a budget deficit, but the Agency will continue to make its case. Overtime has already been allocated for the first quarter of this fiscal year, split evenly between FOs [Field Offices] and the PCs [Program Centers].

Linda reiterated that during the CR, Operations would only be allowed to hire 1 individual for every 3 losses. They are waiting until December to see where losses occur. The first priority is the 800 number. There will be limited field hires for critical situations. We were able to do some advance hiring for 2009 in 2008.

The Commissioner ... is interested in providing resources to ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] who in the past received less attention in terms of hiring, systems, etc. Congress is focused on the challenges faced by ODAR and is sensitive to decreasing the backlogs. If the problems ODAR faces are not fixed, then credibility for the entire Agency is lost. Another challenge is a shifting of workloads as hearings are moved from ODAR to Operations to effectuate them.

Commissioner Astrue also met with the group. Here are some excerpts from that meeting:

In FY 2008, due to attrition and experienced ALJs being used to train the new judges, the Agency actually had about 46 fewer Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). The best ALJs were taken offline to help not only with training the new ALJs but also with the hiring process. ...

Despite all the distractions of hiring and training, we were able to improve productivity because of the commitment of employees. We have locked ourselves into ODAR facility decisions that were more suitable years ago. There are parts of the country that have lighter workloads and parts that are heavier. In particular, in the Atlanta and Chicago regions, the number of facilities is less than adequate.

Under the Continuing Resolution, there is a 1 for 3 replacement hiring rate in the field offices, and 1 for 2 in the DDSs because turnover rates are higher and salaries are lower. The replacement hiring rate in ODAR will be 1 for 1. The new Agency Strategic Plan sets some extremely tough goals for them. ODAR gets the lion’s share of the credit for reducing disability workloads. ...

He feels there is a reasonable chance of exceeding the President’s budget in FY 2009. In the past when Congress has not fully funded the Agency, performance has deteriorated. ...

The Commissioner indicated it took him 11 months to realize there was no focal point to improve notices, to ensure they were up to date, and to prevent them from adding to the workload burdens. He looked at some ODAR notices which were terrible, so he personally made recommendations for rewriting these.