Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 6:07 PM
Subject: COMMISSIONER'S BROADCAST--04/06/10
To All SSA And DDS Employees
Subject: New Hires
I know that our unprecedented workloads continue to pressure every part of the agency. To help ease this pressure, we have been replacing staffing losses across the agency and hiring a substantial number of employees in the DDSs and ODAR. We have recently reassessed resources, and today I approved 900 new hires for front-line positions in Operations; virtually all of this allocation is for field offices. Moreover, I have decided to provide many of the additional hires to the most stressed offices. To the extent that space allows, we will be adding an average of 3 hires to the 200 field offices we found to be the most short-handed.
We can take this step forward because we have honored our commitment to Congress and the American public to make disability backlog reduction our top priority. We have 25 new hearing offices coming on line, and ODAR has reduced the number of pending cases for 15 straight months. Average processing times, particularly for the most backlogged offices, are dropping steadily.
In the face of furloughs and a deep recession, the DDSs have kept the number of pending cases well below our original projections so far this year.
Thank you for all you are doing in hard times to keep serving the American public.
Michael J. Astrue
Commissioner
We can take this step forward because we have honored our commitment to Congress and the American public to make disability backlog reduction our top priority. We have 25 new hearing offices coming on line, and ODAR has reduced the number of pending cases for 15 straight months. Average processing times, particularly for the most backlogged offices, are dropping steadily.
In the face of furloughs and a deep recession, the DDSs have kept the number of pending cases well below our original projections so far this year.
Thank you for all you are doing in hard times to keep serving the American public.
Michael J. Astrue
Commissioner
6 comments:
Can't wait to see if our train-wreck of an office gets part of this--Would help define what is considered "most-stresssed"
I know dds is transferring case out during backlog. Can anyone comment on the types of cases?
It will take 3 years for a new hire to be fully productive. Meanwhile, how many seasoned employees will leave?
The negativity of some commenters astounds me. Sure it takes a while for a new employee to be FULLY productive. However, A3 seems to imply that not fully productive and unproductive are the same thing which is not the case. I would challenge A3 to offer a better solution.
A3--A new hire EODing on 4/12 can be out of class and taking claims within 6 months of EOD and off of review within a year.
Hired the recently retired fed employees; they can be productive immediately; authorization was contained in the Oct Defense Appropriations Act; ret. employees may be hired 1/2 tiime for 3 years with no pension offset. No new buildings, no training, instant results. SSA is too slow to see this opportunity.
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