The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled its first hearing since Congressman Earl Pomeroy became chairman. The hearing will be on April 15 at 10:00. Here are some excerpts from the press release:
This helps explain the April 6 announcement of additional personnel for Social Security field offices.
So far this calendar year,weekly visits to SSA’s field offices have hit the one million mark five times, while in all of last year, visits hit the one-million mark only twice. The Government Accountability Office and others have concluded that resource shortages over the years have contributed to the development of unprecedented backlogs in disability hearings, and caused reduced staffing throughout the agency even as workloads have risen. By the end of 2007, agency staffing had dropped to almost the level in 1972 – before the start of the SSI program – even though SSA’s beneficiary population had nearly doubled since that time. This in turn has led to a decline in customer service and a buildup of unprocessed workloads in SSA local field offices.
In FY 2008 through FY 2010, Congress provided SSA with increased funding to begin to address the backlogs and other service delivery declines. These increased resources reflect Congressional concerns about the unacceptable backlog in disability claim processing, but have not been sufficient to address the growing amount of work that SSA has been forced to defer in order to process the increasing number of new claims on a timely basis.
Despite the hard work and dedication of SSA employees in field offices and teleservice centers, SSA’s level of service to the public has deteriorated. Field office managers report that they do not have sufficient staff to answer the phones, assist walk-in visitors, and produce the high-quality work the public deserves. In FY 2009, 58 percent of callers who tried to reach an SSA field office got a busy signal, up from 51 percent in FY 2008. As a result, more walk-in visits occur for matters that could be handled by phone. Field office managers and front-line staff also are increasingly concerned about declining quality in the work they produce. Nearly all resources are needed to process claims and assist SSA’s customers, and little is left to perform traditional quality-control and staff-training activities. ...
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) stated “the Social Security Administration (SSA) was right to prioritize reducing the disability claims backlog, but I am concerned that other services that SSA provides to the American people are not getting sufficient attention and resources. I am interested in knowing what steps SSA is taking to address these other growing and backlogged workloads, and how the Subcommittee can be instrumental in making sure that SSA is once again able to provide the top-notch customer service the public deserves.”
It is about time. What needs to be investigated is the number of supervisors in each office. The ratio of supervisors to employees is too high in some offices. These supervisors should start producing or get demoted back to claims representative where they belong. In some offices these supervisors are not in charge of any unit and their knowledge of the program is very limited and therefore morale suffers.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad that the supervisor and management staff have no real knowledge of the programs. We have the manager answering the phone and giving wrong information and then we have to argue with the clients who say, " well I spoke to the manager" when you have to explain to them that the info given was totally incorrect. It would be nice to have lower level staff answering phones, but everyone is up front assisting the increasing flow in foot traffic. And the new people that are hired are overwhelmed by the workloads and no adjudication time that they will be gone as soon as the economy picks up. So sad these days at SSA.
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