The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report with the title, "Social Security Administration: Service Delivery Plan Needed To Address Baby Boom Challenges." The report notes that:
The GAO report is drawing attention from U.S. News and World Report and Government Executive. More importantly, Chairman Baucus and Ranking Minority Member Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee have issued a press release citing the GAO report as a reason for Social Security to get additional funding.
Update: U.S. News and World Report has a second story about the GAO report.
Reduced staffing [at Social Security] also impacted key customer service indicators. In fiscal year 2007, more than 3 million customers waited for over 1 hour to be served. Further, SSA’s Field Office Caller Survey found that 51 percent of customers calling selected field offices had at least one earlier call that had gone unanswered, but for methodological reasons, the unanswered call rate was likely even higher.GAO urges that Social Security develop a service delivery plan. Social Security's response is that it already has a plan. GAO mentions the argument that Social Security lacks adequate operational funding, but does not endorse it. The report does tentatively suggest that Social Security's service delivery plan may need to call for more money for the agency, which may be an oblique way of saying that Social Security should be sounding the alarm itself, instead of downplaying its problems.
The GAO report is drawing attention from U.S. News and World Report and Government Executive. More importantly, Chairman Baucus and Ranking Minority Member Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee have issued a press release citing the GAO report as a reason for Social Security to get additional funding.
Update: U.S. News and World Report has a second story about the GAO report.
1 comment:
How can anyone possibly expect the agency leadership staff to endorse any solution when it is so very clear that "Leadership Staff" is the primary problem. All layers of management have blamed everyone else (from agency attorneys to agency ALJs), although so many of the GAO and SSAB reports identify management as the primary problem. (Look at all of the reports about HPI.) Both GAO and SSAB have said in various reports that ODAR management have universally demonstrated the INABILITY to implement ANY initiative.
Now the SSA and ODAR Leaders don't know that they need more staff or more money???
Is it so very hard to calculate the cause of the problem at SSA and ODAR?
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