The House Social Security Subcommittee announced the following witness list for its hearing on Tuesday, April 28 on Social Security's implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA):
I certainly agree that Social Security needs technological improvement, but it seems obvious at ground level that the only thing that will solve Social Security's service delivery problem is more manpower. We have not seen much from the SSAB about Social Security's manpower needs. This seems unbalanced and misleading to me.
It is interesting that there will be a witness from the Public Buildings Service at General Services Administration (GSA). If Social Security is going to hire many more personnel, it is going to need to lease additional office space. GSA does this for the federal government. GSA has a longstanding reputation for being incredibly slow at acquiring office space.
- Mary Glenn-Croft, Deputy Commissioner for Budget, Finance and Management, Social Security Administration
- Rob Hewell, Acting Deputy Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, United States General Services Administration
- The Honorable Patrick O’Carroll, Inspector General, Social Security Administration
- Valerie Melvin, Director of Information Management and Human Capital Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office
- Sylvester J. Schieber, Chairman, Social Security Advisory Board
I certainly agree that Social Security needs technological improvement, but it seems obvious at ground level that the only thing that will solve Social Security's service delivery problem is more manpower. We have not seen much from the SSAB about Social Security's manpower needs. This seems unbalanced and misleading to me.
It is interesting that there will be a witness from the Public Buildings Service at General Services Administration (GSA). If Social Security is going to hire many more personnel, it is going to need to lease additional office space. GSA does this for the federal government. GSA has a longstanding reputation for being incredibly slow at acquiring office space.
6 comments:
Why no testimony from you or NOSSCR?
Overtime,overtime,overtime.All salaried employees work six days a week.Sunday too if religious belief's permit.Private companies do it,ssa can too.Simple solution with the new funding.
If the hearing is about ARRA, the GSA presence is likely to do with the new computing center, sinc e ARRA money is involved.
In answer to A#2, SSA employees already routinely work all available OT, Comp T, and Credit Hours. The federal govt keeps track of hours of work, not employees. Using this method, a full time employee produces 2080 hrs. of work per work year. By this standard, SSA is 1000's of work years behind based on the calculated time needed to complete all work on hand. So, OT is not the answer. We've been getting by on OT since the first Bush administration. It doesn't work anymore. Don't forget the 750K hearings in the backlog, more coming in everyday. Lots of our managers would be happy to only work 6 days a week. In private industry, they sell the company. We can't do that.
I agree with Ms. Ortiz. In addition, after employees work a lot of overtime week after week they tend to become less productive per hour. I was a manager of a small office and remember many 80+ hour weeks while getting paid for 40 hours. This type of dedication is not unknown in SSA. At the same time we had to prevent the rank and file from working without getting paid. Many employees see the person behind the case waiting for an answer or a resolution to their problem.
SSA definitely needs more staff but the techology needs to be improved to give the field office employees the ability to take actions that they now must ask a program service center to take. Two employees are involved when with better technology one could take the action. There are still too many "systems limitations" that take the intervention of someone, somewhere else.
"In private industry, they sell the company. We can't do that."
Yes.If it's not profitable.
By Anonymous #2(claimant)
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