Good Report On iClaims For Retirement Cases

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

At an April 15, 2010 hearing before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Social Security, Congressman Xavier Becerra asked the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to review the iClaim application to ensure individuals filing for benefits using the iClaim application were receiving an appropriate level of service from SSA.

To address Congressman Becerra’s request, we selected a random sample of 250 RIB [Retirement Insurance Benefits] iClaim applications filed in May 2010.

We surveyed the SSA [Social Security Administration] employees who processed the RIB iClaim applications to determine the number of times the Agency had to re-contact individuals for additional information or clarification and the reasons for the re-contacts. We also obtained the employees’ perceptions of the iClaim application process. Finally, we reviewed 50 of the RIB iClaim applications from our sample to determine whether the information provided by the individuals in their iClaim applications corresponded with the information recorded in SSA’s system that was used to determine individuals’ eligibility for benefits and their benefit amounts. ...

SSA employees were generally positive regarding the amount of time it took to process an iClaim application. However, employees expressed concerns about the difficulty in re-contacting individuals.

In addition, we found that the information provided by individuals in their iClaim applications corresponded with the information recorded in SSA’s system. ...

Re-contacts with individuals are a necessary and important part of processing some iClaim applications. In fact, of the 245 individuals in our review who filed a RIB iClaim application, SSA re-contacted 144 individuals (59 percent) to obtain additional information or clarification. ...

While SSA employees had both positive and negative comments about the iClaim application, employees were generally positive about the amount of time it took to process an iClaim application. ... In fact, most employees responded iClaim applications were faster to process than in-person or telephone applications. Specifically, 62 percent of employees in our review stated iClaim applications were typically the fastest application type to process. ...

Although iClaim applications generally take the least amount of time to process, employees were concerned about the difficulty with re-contacting individuals. To fully develop the claim, we found employees had to re-contact individuals in our sample up to five times, for an average of two times per individual. ...

During our review of RIB iClaim applications, there were no indications that individuals filing for RIB using the iClaim application did not receive an appropriate level of service from SSA. In fact, SSA employees re-contacted more than half the individuals in our sample to obtain additional information or clarification. While employees raised concerns regarding some difficulty in re-contacting individuals, they also recognized that iClaim applications were typically faster to process than in-person or telephone applications. In addition, we found that the information individuals provide on their iClaim applications corresponded with the information in SSA’s system used to determine benefit eligibility and amount.

Note carefully that this was a study of the retirement claims, which are, by far, the easiest claims to take. The report would be far more mixed if it were talking about survivor claims or disability claims. Supplemental Security Income claims cannot even be taken over the internet.