Inspector General Report On AFGE Allegations

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

In April 2010, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals, testified before the Subcommittee on Social Security, House Committee on Ways and Means, that SSA had banned its employees from explaining MOE [Month of Entitlement] choices with claimants. The AFGE president urged members of Congress to direct SSA to eliminate this “gag order.” In response to AFGE’s allegations, SSA reported to the Subcommittee, “We have not banned our employees from explaining month of election (MOE) choices. While we do not attempt to influence a claimant’s MOE choice, our technicians do provide information about different MOE options.” ...

[OIG speaking about the results of their investigation into the AFGE allegations] We do not believe SSA’s revised MOE policy bans employees from explaining pertinent information—including MOE options—to retirement claimants. Rather, the new policy states that claims technicians should only provide certain procedural calculations when a claimant specifically requests that they do so. Many claims technicians with whom we spoke agreed with limiting some of the information previously provided to retirement applicants, as it was confusing and overwhelming. However, over half of the claims technicians who responded disagreed with the removal of break-even points. In fact, some continued to provide this information to claimants without a specific request—contrary to the new policy. Although we did not determine whether break-even points were beneficial to claimants, we believe the Agency needs to explain more clearly its rationale to claims technicians if it believes these are no longer relevant for retirement applicants.