President Obama has announced four finalists in the annual "Securing Americans Value and Efficience" competition. One of the finalists is Faith Stanfield of the Social Security Administration who recommended that Social Security stop printing and mailing its employee magazine, OASIS, and just make it available online.
OASIS was always a truly worthless house organ that failed to capture the realities of working in a field office. Many a front line employee suggested it be done away with but were ignored.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of people here in the PSC agree with the above comment. All these years and I have never received a copy of OASIS and when we inquire on how to get one, nobody has a clue. Saw a manager with it once, but she received a national citation and was probably pictured in it.
ReplyDeleteMakes you wonder how much this will really save if so many people never get one.
agreed...plus, why is this a suggestion that merits national recognition by the President. Seems to me that printing and distributing this magazine should have been cancelled long ago my some middle manager.
ReplyDeletehow about those who suggested handing ssi back to the states? that would save a ton more money than not printing a useless internal magazine.
ReplyDeleteLots of copies of the magazine make it to the ODAR offices; we have a sizeable stack of unclaimed/unwanted copies of the latest issue in our break room.
ReplyDeleteFor this to be one of the finalists for savings in the govt shows what a joke the SAVE program is. Last year's winner was also from SSA and the idea was so lame that even though it was implemented, it ended up accomplishing and saving nothing. The special appointment calendar for internet applicants has never been accessed by a claimant in my FO because the criteria are so restrictive. I and many co-workers have sent in many suggestions over the years that would have accomplished real savings but they were disregarded, and we continue to operate within wasteful operational and systems constraints while this kind of nonsense gets lauded.
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