Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a report with the title, Social Security Administration’s Major Management and Performance Challenges. There is not much in it that was news to me except a report that there are now "Extended Service Teams" in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Virginia that exist to help other state Disability Determination Services (DDS) make disability determinations at the intiial and reconsideration levels. I had heard of the team in Arkansas, but not the other states.
I also found this sentence from the report interesting: "SSA has less than 75 percent of the employees it had 25 years ago, despite core workloads increasing by 50 percent and new workloads being added." I do not remember OIG saying anything like this before the election of Barack Obama. When you put it like that, it is obvious why there are serious backlogs all over the place at Social Security. I wonder how aware Michael Astrue was of this reality when he was nominated to be Commissioner of Social Security.
I also found this sentence from the report interesting: "SSA has less than 75 percent of the employees it had 25 years ago, despite core workloads increasing by 50 percent and new workloads being added." I do not remember OIG saying anything like this before the election of Barack Obama. When you put it like that, it is obvious why there are serious backlogs all over the place at Social Security. I wonder how aware Michael Astrue was of this reality when he was nominated to be Commissioner of Social Security.
Well, regarding staffing, in 1980, we had roughly 90K people (this was before FTE's and that was real individual people, not work hours divided by 2080.) Since then, SSA's work loads have increased, but I think by more than 50%. Maybe a hundred%, but that's a guess, not an actual finding. Automation was supposed to make up for the cuts, but the cuts were made before the automation was installed, etc. Result--mess we're in now.
ReplyDeleteField offices are in really bad shape and have been forever. That is not a concern of top management because they are focused on DIB backlogs. But, people don't become COSS because they know anything about SSA. They're above that sort of thing, really, with few notable and outstanding exceptions. Just recently, COSS incumbents have been advocates of privatization as is the current COSS.
We get what they send us. And, barring a miracle,staffing is not going to increase. We should stop complaining. It can be worse. Sigh.
Same in the hearing offices, only there automation has added dramatically to the workloads. Also we are short of hearing rooms in many offices. ODAR hires more judges, but without hearing rooms, what can we do? (No VTC is not helpful, as there must be a secure place for the claimant to sit where documents can be explained by the reporters to the unrepresented claimants and exchanged with the judge. And VTC seriously compromises the ability to have the judge SEE the limitations--bad news for claimants.)
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