From a press release:
The American Federation of Government Employees questions the validity of SSA management claims that progress is being made on disability claims backlogs; and that efficient management practices are improving office performances. “While resources are limited and field office staffing levels have not increased in relation to additional workloads, SSA management continues to use smoke and mirrors in measuring the amount of work completed at field offices,” noted Witold Skwierczynski, president of AFGE’s Council of Field Operations Locals for the Social Security Administration. “SSA management has been manipulating the disability claims process, making it appear that offices have become much more efficient due to management improvements, when the biggest increase has been in claims that are denied on technical grounds.”
Such manipulations include processing claims for individuals who clearly are ineligible for benefits, and padding statistics by taking unnecessary actions such as reissuing Medicare cards to every client in the office whether or not they request such cards. ...“It’s outrageous that some SSA managers are condoning the practice of using system tricks and having employees do unnecessary work to better statistical performance. These practices adversely affect service delivery at SSA and detract from the mission of the agency to assist those in need,” concluded Skwierczynski.
6 comments:
This is nothing new. The amazing thing to me is that they can all do it with a straight face, telling us that it represents service to the public. It is the biggest reason I never wanted a management position - couldn't be a cheerleader for padding stats. However, I can understand WHY managers do this - it is the only way they have of making sure they get enough staff to do the jobs that need to be done. It's a screwy system.
We have just been given a brand new goal on a workload that has been ignored for years. In order to make the goal, the ratio between old and new cases (in this category) has to be 5%. It's easy to see that if the staff doesn't clear any of the new cases (which actually increases the total pending amount) that we could meet the goal.
Where I work they shuffle things around to make the numbers look good, so I'm sure other offices are doing it as well. If management cared as much about the quality of work as they do about the quantity of work SSA might be on to something.
Boo Hoo for Witold, does he still work for the SSA? I'm not sure where these folks work - In my office (and the offices that are close to us) we have so many people (and claims) coming in that we wouldn't have time to manufacture work. I would love to work in a office that has the time to manufacture work. All we do is interview all day.
Amazingly, all three anons are correct. There are tons of work coming in so you would think that no one needs to manufacture work to get credit. However, certain types of work are deemed to be worth more than other types, or someone thinks they are, so work is manipulated to make it look like the more valuable work is getting done so getting more credit for it. This could be, at any given time, dib claims, or overpayments, or redeterminations, or cdr's. I have seen it where there are backlogs of work that, if completed, would be worth x-amount of credit, but management wants other work sought out for completion because it would be worth x-plus more. Bizarre, for sure, but that is why a union is needed--to serve as counterpoint to incompetent/dishonest management.
One example of "high value" work is rep payee misuse of benefits. An investigation has to be made, letters must be sent, a determination must be made. The only problem is that in order to get credit for doing all the work involved, the CR must find that there is misuse and and update the rep payee system. If the CR finds there is no misuse, then there is no work credit for the work done.
I think CR's in every office interview all day. But how many SSI claims does anon 3 take from people who had no intent to file for SSI and no chance of ever being eligible because that is agency policy? That is manufactured work too. And if the T2 claim is adjudicated with a windfall indicator because of the SSI, down the road, that creates more work to get rid of the SSI claim that never should have been filed.
This manipulation was rampant throughout my career. There's so much pressure by upper management to produce numbers in any way possible as part of the holy grail of more staffing. You can produce tons of work units by processing numerous non-essential workloads, for example. Another instance of the dysfunction which epitomizes SSA
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