From Frontline, the newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA):
Although Commissioner Astrue was not able to attend the [early October NCSSMA] conference, he did engage in active conversation with the delegates through a video conference. ... He also shared his vision of the future for field offices, describing the future as an “evolution rather than a revolution”. He expects field office positions will gradually evolve from handling repetitive, high volume workloads to handling the most complex cases while automated services begin handling more of the simple cases. ...
He predicted that ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] will likely stop being the focus of the agency’s budget by the end of FY 2011 at which time field offices and customer service needs will likely become the primary focus of the budget.
Dream on, COSS. Nancy Ortiz
ReplyDeleteI just love it when COSS or some other agency bigwig addresses NCSSMA. It's always some self-serving drivel, painting a rosy picture in the middle of a train wreck. Even better is the NCSSMA "leadership" preening and sucking up to the higherups. Those conferences are complete snoozefests.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but you have to admit, if you put yourself in the COSS's shoes, what else could you possibly say to NCSSMA? "Get lost, you losers," probably wouldn't work. And of course the leadership sucks up; it's their chance to get some reflected star light. Best to just ignore the whole dance.
ReplyDeleteThe field office and customer service crises are very real and have been overshadowed by ODAR and the backlog. It is too bad that SSA cannot work on both issues simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteOrtiz - you don't need to sign your name at the end of your posts. It appears in the title. Give us a break.
ReplyDeleteA#4--Ok, I'll dispense with the sig. In the meantime, who, pray tell, are you?
ReplyDelete