Let me pass along a bizarre little detail about the current state of Social Security's electronic files. After a request for hearing is filed on a Social Security disability claim, changed circumstances in a claimant's life sometimes make it appropriate for the claimant to file an additional claim with Social Security for a different type of disability benefit. When this happens, the new claim is typically "escalated" to the hearing level and disposed of at the same time as the claim upon which the request for hearing was originally filed. I now know that an escalated new claim for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) changes what had been an electronic file to a paper file. Why? Apparently, some glitch in the software. This may happen with other escalated claims, such as cases where a claimant asks for a hearing on a Disability Insurance Benefits claim and then loses her husband, causing her to file an additional claim for Disabled Widows benefits, but I do not know for sure. Maybe someone more familiar with this problem can tell us.
I hear that Social Security is working on the problem.
I hear that Social Security is working on the problem.
4 comments:
03/15/2009: There are far too many 'bugs', exclusions, and exceptions to the electronic folder system processes. It's operation is dependent upon the interactions with various SSA programs: EDCS, MCS, MSSICS, eView, etc. xxxxx If the interactions fail at any point, the electronic folder must then be converted to paper and processed in the old fashioned way. xxxx There are some 'workarounds' but there simply are cases in which claims cannot be electronic folder cases from the beginning -- or that can no longer be maintained and processed electronically due to some change in parameter. xxxx I am given to understand that after about 7 months; a new, escalated case cannot be added to the pending electronic folder case -- something in the program (intentionally or unintentionally I do not know). xxxx There are also problems with the electronic folder for cases that involve members of SSI couples. Late filed appeals sometimes become exclusions. . . . And, so on. xxxx In my view, the designers made the EDCS system (the system that begins the process of creating an electronic folder, addings cases, etc.) way too dependent upon interactions with the other systems -- and did not allow for adequately for manual overrides. Apparently they did not foresee or expect the multitude and variety of cases that are excluded from the electronic folder process from the beginning, or become so sometime during the life of the claim. xxxx I have been told that they are working on a replacement system for EDCS, but who knows when it will be ready -- or whether it will be an improvement. ;-(
It is not a glitch - the inability to add claims (actually, the limitation involves deactivation of the update after transfer function to update a pending case)pending over 270 days old is a designed feature. Apparently, somebody in management made an arbitrary decision that adding claims to hearings pending over a certain number of days is an absolute no-no.
Of course, these are the same morons who specifically issued instructions to employees telling them not to try to work around limitations to keep cases electronic (apparently, it messes with their holy grail EDCS utilization numbers). They are also the same idiots who insist that a manual case establishment option isn't necessary (because it would be eventually be made unnecessary when they finally eliminate all the exceptions from the system, which will happen in about 20 years -if at all - at the rate they are advancing).
This electronic case system is eventually going to fail because the people making the design decisions are inept fools completely out of touch with the day-to-day operations of the agency. And, like everything else, the failure will be blamed on rank and file employees who have had this abomination shoved down their throats and yet whose feedback is never requested and whose suggestions for improvement are continually ignored.
If you think you want to have electronic file, you are badly confused. They take much, much longer to process.
The problem arises because the idiots who designed the system failed to link it so that the two cases could be associated! If it were private industry it would be fixed in an instant. Because it is SSA it will take an earthquake to get it right. SSA refuses to spend the money to hire Microsoft or another company just as good to do a complete remake of the system and they will keep doing "workarounds" that will never quite fix the problems. I have a former colleague who had the head of SSA's computer projects sit with at the bench during a hearing and as each problem came up this head honcho just kept saying there is a work around for that! My colleague kept saying "Judges don't have time for work arounds!"
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