News From NCSSMA

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has a new President, Joe Dirago of Newburgh, NY. The Executive Committee of NCSSMA met on September 16 with Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Linda McMahon, the Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Roger McDonnell and Associate Commissioner for OPSOS, Mark Blatchford. Here are some excerpts from NCSSMA's notes on that meeting:

• The 2010 budget is expected to be close to the Commissioner’s budget request but will not be enough to allow the agency to fill every position or complete all workloads. Resources will be directed at the high-profile workloads and where Commissioner Astrue sees the greatest need. For example, the Commissioner is looking at the decrease in public satisfaction with the 800 number. In addition, he is still concerned with the growing disability workload. ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] has added significant resources and has decreased the hearings backlogs. We will finish the year with a total of just under 800,000 initial claims pending.
• Expectations are that the 2010 budget will be passed in November or December. In the meantime, Operations will continue to work as much overtime as possible. ...
• The agency brought on 3,700 new hires in FY09. [Fiscal Year 2009, which ended September 30, 2009] PSCs [Program Service Centers] saw a 5 for 6 replacement ratio, while the ratio for the field was 1.7 to 1. Budget forecasts for 2011 won’t be known until December. ...
• Mark Blatchford stated that he has made the Regions aware that there is Congressional interest in Work CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews] and this is another workload that we need to work. There is no goal or mandate, but the Agency will be expected to report on our progress in this area at the end of year. ...
• Roger stated that the number of disability initial claims pending in DDSs has increased to around 780,000 this year. Receipts are up 14% to almost 3 million and are expected to reach 3.3 million in FY10. To address the growing volume, the increased hiring for the DDSs [Disability Determination Services] in 2009 will continue into FY10 and federal capacity for processing disability claims (in ODO [Office of Disability Operations] and ROs [Regional Offices] ) will also be enhanced. The agency is also considering policy changes and developing automation tools to streamline the medical decision process. When asked if consideration had been given to moving all DDSs from the three legacy systems currently in use to one system, Linda replied that we are moving in that direction. She also confirmed that the agency will be reinstituting the Reconsideration step in the ten Prototype states, but because of the expensive, it will be done gradually, probably beginning in Michigan. ...
• Commissioner Astrue is very concerned with the busy rate and time in queue experienced by callers and is committed to improving our 800# service. In addition to opening a new TSC i[Telecommunication Service Centers] n Jackson, Tennessee, he will likely provide 350 – 400 new hires to TSCs in FY10. Additional staffing in the TSCs has reduced the projected SPIKE hours [SPIKE hours refer to times when the PSCs cannot handle the calls they are receiving and other Social Security employees who do not normally deal with this workload have to be pressed into service] in PSCs to 291,000 in 2010, down from 325,000 in FY09.