Plowing Ahead With An Occupational Information System

From a report issued by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

The objective of our review was to assess the Social Security Administration's (SSA) plans for developing an occupational information system (OIS) designed specifically for its disability adjudication process. ...

To conduct this review, we attended public meetings on the OIS, interviewed SSA staff, and gathered and reviewed information on the Agency’s efforts to develop an OIS designed specifically for its disability adjudication process. ...

Based on information available as of July 2010, SSA’s strategy to develop an OIS designed specifically for its disability adjudication process appears reasonable. ...

SSA has put much effort into developing an OIS and established the Office of Vocational Resources Development to oversee the project. ...

The Agency is performing an Occupational and Medical-Vocational Study to determine which occupations to review first when the Agency begins conducting job analyses. As a part of this study, SSA staff is reviewing 5,000 cases to determine the most common jobs reported by claimants for their past work and the most common occupations cited in medical-vocational denials by adjudicators.

There is not even a mention in this report of concerns that an OIS created by Social Security will be manipulated to achieve pre-determined goals and will lack the credibility needed to stand up to judicial review.

Michael Astrue's term as Social Security Commissioner will end in a little over two years. Unless Astrue is nominated to a new term, a new Commissioner will review the OIS project. It may well be derailed or shifted to a different track then. Even if the OIS project is completed as planned, it still has to stand up to judicial review. No one can now predict how that will come out.

To me, it is obvious that a consensus plan would be far more sensible. Achieving a consensus plan would require that Social Security relinquish the ability to control the process so that it can achieve pre-determined goals. Unfortunately, retaining the ability to control the process to achieve pre-determined goals seems to be the entire point for Social Security.

By the way, I have heard rumors about the size of Social Security's Office of Vocational Resources Development. Does anyone have any solid numbers on how many employees it has?