We heard back in September that Social Security was planning to start going from hearing office to hearing office registering attorneys and others who represent Social Security claimants for online access to their clients files. Has this been happening? What is the status of this plan?
6 comments:
I haven't seen any specific announcement, but this may have been quietly rolled out to all the HO's.
My understanding is that we must contact the HO's in which our clients have cases pending and request to be enrolled/placed on their list, even if we took part in any previous pilots.
http://www.ssa.gov/representation/eFolder.html
Hearing offices are generally contacting attorney reps on a flow basis. However, you can contact your local hearing office to sign up or get on the list to sign up. Major metro areas also have had and continue to have sign-p events.
I made contact to get on the list about a month ago and have not heard from my ODAR about it. I'm still quite angry about the way this has been done. I'm a rep of 30 years, have been practicing in this particular ODAR jurisdiction all my career, and cannot get access. A co-worker who has just graduated from law school has access simply because she was able to attend the NOSSCR conference. Doesn't seem right.
This process is being conducted on an invitation basis, precipitated by a showing of interest and/or by the number of pending cases an individual rep may have in any ODAR. Each region has a certain allocation of invitations to send out so that the system doesn't bog down with an inundation of applications. The Hearing Office Directors who are passing out the invitations don't care if you have 30 years experience, graduated order of the coif, or are president of the ABA. They care about whether the user represents sufficient claimants to maximize the benefits offered by the tools. Enrollment is gradual but currently ongoing. Call your local ODAR and ask about their process and how you might get an earlier invitation to the dance.
Thanks for the tip, Anonymous at 4:38. I came across as a little bitter, and I am. I've been craving this system of access since it was first proposed, which is about 4 years ago, now, and I'm ready for it. If the allocations are based upon the number of claimants, then why did every person who went to NOSSCR get to sign up? It's not as if the ODAR was checking on the number of claimants represented by the reps that were attending the conferences, but access was given as a matter of course to those attendees.
It wasn't every person that went to NOSSCR anyway, but the reason was that the SSA brought people to NOSSCR to handle the set up rather than go to the various locations and do it one by one.
Frankly, the system to sign up, essentially eyeballing the person signing up to make sure they were who they said they were, was probably unnecessary but consistent with a mindset that trusts no one, especially lawyers
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