Social Security has made a lot of announcements lately on FedBizOpps.Gov seeking space or services for meetings. Here is a list:
- Front Line Conference
- Front Line Conference
- Conference Support Services and Space
- Front Line Conference
- Regional Award Ceremony and Management Conference
- Workers Compensation Seminar
- Training for SSA Disability Hearing Officers
- Hotel Services - Meeting Space/ Food/ AV Rental
- Conference Room Space
- Conference Space and Support Services for SSA Leadership Conference
Many of these meetings may be essential by anyone's definition. However, I have no doubt that the improvement in Social Security's budget situation has a lot to do with the length of this list.
Meetings like these are quite useful for purposes of training and morale. Under normal circumstances, I support them.
You know that a "but" is coming.
If one works at Social Security's central or regional offices, it may be easy to temporarily forget that Social Security is an agency in crisis. Social Security cannot answer its telephones or process its workloads. There are backlogs both visible and hidden all over the agency. The budget situation has improved since Barack Obama became President, but the crisis will not be over until Social Security hires something like 10,000 to 20,000 more employees. We are a long way from that.
Can an agency in crisis afford these meetings? Does scheduling these meetings suggest that some at Social Security think that we are back to business as usual? Some of this money being spent on meetings might be better spent on travel for Social Security brass to get out in the field more.
We will finally know that the crisis is over when Social Security field offices no longer have "private" telephone numbers not given out to claimants. Those "private" numbers are essential now because it is almost impossible to get through to these field offices if you use the phone number in the telephone book. Without the "private" numbers, a school nurse calling to report that the child of a field office employee is sick could never get through. Without the "private" numbers, Social Security management could never get through to the field offices. Discontinue the "private" numbers and I have no problem with these meetings.
Meetings like these are quite useful for purposes of training and morale. Under normal circumstances, I support them.
You know that a "but" is coming.
If one works at Social Security's central or regional offices, it may be easy to temporarily forget that Social Security is an agency in crisis. Social Security cannot answer its telephones or process its workloads. There are backlogs both visible and hidden all over the agency. The budget situation has improved since Barack Obama became President, but the crisis will not be over until Social Security hires something like 10,000 to 20,000 more employees. We are a long way from that.
Can an agency in crisis afford these meetings? Does scheduling these meetings suggest that some at Social Security think that we are back to business as usual? Some of this money being spent on meetings might be better spent on travel for Social Security brass to get out in the field more.
We will finally know that the crisis is over when Social Security field offices no longer have "private" telephone numbers not given out to claimants. Those "private" numbers are essential now because it is almost impossible to get through to these field offices if you use the phone number in the telephone book. Without the "private" numbers, a school nurse calling to report that the child of a field office employee is sick could never get through. Without the "private" numbers, Social Security management could never get through to the field offices. Discontinue the "private" numbers and I have no problem with these meetings.
4 comments:
So, you're saying it's a good thing if the school nurse can't get through and SSA management can't get in touch with its field offices? I really don't get what's so offensive about having an administrative line.
The training conferences are a completely different issue. Yes, there is some cost. And if you want to maintain the status quo, we could cancel all training and all efforts to communicate to our employees.
They could save a bundle by using their expensive video equipment for the training. I enjoyed my trip last summer, but it wasn't efficient for the agency.
In years past, the ALJ association seminar was partially subsidized by the agency. Agency heads spoke and there was training. Attendance was voluntary, however, and office disruption was minimal. Last year EVERY ALJ was ordered to attend training at a resort hotel in a resort city in the middle of tourist season. I enjoyed having a paid vacation. But it stopped every hearing in the agency for a week. I found the meetings heavy on indoctrination and light on training.
Back in the 1990's, we had mandatory video training for judges and writers. Some of those old video tapes are still around hearing offices. That provoked much less office disruption -- couple of hours versus an entire week.
My wife and I will enjoy our next paid vacation, either this year or the next, but as a taxpayer, I am rather outraged at the waste.
All businesses need unpublished lines to conduct business of an administrative nature. So, it's not the admin lines that bugs you. It's not even the meetings that bug you. What bugs both you and me is the unmet needs for ordinary business everywhere. Not enough people for (fill in the blank.) Period.
But, it has always been true that when times are good in CO, the Commish takes trips to nice places like HI, FL (preferrably Disney World or Universal, Naples, Lauderdale). And, no one else goes anywhere. CO employees get training up the wazoo and CRT's sit for months without training classes. Why? As far as the Commish, the WH, and OMB are concerned, Baltimore is SSA.
They don't know about any field offices except K Street in DC. Don't know from anything, in fact, about reception area waiting times, hearings backlogs, etc. Commishes want to have buildings built, visits to Geithner, get their names in the Federal Executive ("upcoming exec gets honorary degree"), and big fat SES bonus checks with their names on them. They do not want whiny little complaints from members of the public whose DIB checks stopped, DM's with no SR's, stuff like that. They want bad numbers to go away and their subordinates to be suitably subsurvient.
So, what will happen is that the budget will come in for 2010 in record time, there will be money for SSA, and it won't be enough. So, a few FTE's will get parcelled out for June 2010 and we'll start out next April two quarters behind with no local budgets in sight.
Oh, one more thing. The field office components will suddenly discover in July of this year that there's unspent travel money, so everyone GS-12 and above will end up schlepping to Vegas in August. Where it's 118 in the shade and it's a long way from the hotel to a liquor store for cheap beer. Some lucky folks like A#2 will get to go to Baltimore. But, as usual, there will be no one looking at the whole thing managing the spending for the greatest benefit to the public and staff. It's just too good for the likes of us.
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