Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has issued its March 2010 newsletter. The newsletter features a long article on service delivery problems at large Social Security field offices. Here is how the article begins:

Where can you meet 300-500 new people every day? You can find them in the waiting rooms of Social Security’s busiest offices. Nationwide, Social Security is experiencing growth in the number of people visiting offices. As of early March 2010, the agency has already had five weeks in which it greeted over one million customers. In comparison, the agency had over a million customers only two weeks out of the entire last calendar year.

Social Security employees in many offices, both large and small, are feeling the effects of this customer growth. But, many of the largest offices are experiencing higher customer growth rates than the national average. Consequently, while the agency's overall waiting times have remained steady at approximately 21 minutes for the past several years, the busiest offices are experiencing waiting times exceeding 30 minutes. This is because there is often an average of one Service Representative (SR) for every 45-60 customers visiting per day in these offices. Because some interviews can be lengthy due to their complexity, this number of customers is more than one employee can adequately assist in the six hours usually spent at the reception counter each day.