This broadcast e-mail went out earlier today from David Foster the Deputy Commissioner for Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) to all ODAR employees:
Date: April 27, 2009
Subject: Tipping the Backlog
It is my pleasure to report to you that this month, we turned the corner on the disability backlog. We started the year with a pending of 760,813 cases and we ended April at 756,107 cases. My congratulations to everyone.
I will be asking the office managers to find a way to celebrate this moment. While we are still a far cry from moving the disability backlog to 466,000 cases, these moments come rarely and they must be enjoyed.
Great job! David
Wow, a half of a percentage point drop in the backlog over 4 months is cause for celebration. Way to go ODAR! Keep those expectations high. A couple more years of this kind of exceptional effort and they might get the backlog down to where it was a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is that the backlogs are growing every year since before this decade began, and this tiny blip on the radar is not a tipping point but a fluke.
"I will be asking the office managers to find a way to celebrate this moment"
ReplyDeleteClaimants,people that are served by social security will be disturbed by that statement.I know i am.
Kinda reminds me of a body count just before Tet.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget that with their relentless insistence on more, more, more numbers they've pushed a lot of ALJ's into paying cases that are at least qustionable if not downright wrong. It's all in the numbers.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry though, it's only taxpayer money.
If I wasn't such a Pollyanna I'd think this was sarcasm.
ReplyDelete"And don't forget that with their relentless insistence on more, more, more numbers they've pushed a lot of ALJ's into paying cases that are at least qustionable if not downright wrong."
ReplyDeleteThere has never been any quality control and ALJ's have always paid questionable cases -- they are just being asked to do it quicker. Thank God there is at least some concern for numbers now so that claimants don't have to wait years for their questionable decision.
Now hang on. He may be right. When we look back someday we may see that April 2009 was the tipping point. Of course, it seems a little early for the "Mission Accomplished" banners. And even D-Day wasn't a time for celebrations. After all, there is a lot of work to do after a tipping point is reached.
ReplyDeleteWhat is troubling is that when summer vacations arrive and production drops we could easily see things tip back the other way. What will the Deputy Commissioner say then?
The high school graduates who count the widgets are pretty good with fudging the numbers.
ReplyDeleteIs this guy nuts? You clear 4K cases, and it's a tipping point? That's just the decision, mind. It's not a check to the claimant or the auxiliaries, any extra income/resource development, WC offset docs, etc. Please tell me this guy is a political appointee, not a careerist.
ReplyDeleteOf course, during the holidays there's not a lot of production going on anywhere because of leave, holidays, bad weather, etc. So, if you shovel a bunch of delayed work out the door in the first quarter, you get an increase in production, right? You see this every first quarter in practically every component. As if this we didn't know. And, of course, how ALJ's pick out people to allow remains a mysterious process, intuitive and highly experimnetal. No sympathy here for people a lot of whom don't even send their own emails. Big Al Gore sigh.