From
report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
In an October 6, 2011 letter, [Congressional] Committee members expressed concern that managers in the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) may have instructed ALJs and hearing office employees to set aside their disability cases during the last week of September 2011 and refrain from issuing decisions until the following week, which would have delayed the award of benefits to thousands of claimants awaiting ALJ decisions. ...
Since as early as 1983, SSA has not counted workload totals for the 53rd week [of the Fiscal Year] in its year-end management information (MI) data. As a result, from September 24 through 30, 2011, also referred to as Week 53, SSA did not include its process workload count toward either its Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 or 2012 MI totals. This policy affected how workloads were counted throughout the Agency and not only ODAR’s hearing workloads. Several ODAR nationwide hearings workload counts, namely hearing dispositions and decisions written, decreased significantly during Week 53. For example, hearing dispositions dropped 87.8 percent compared to an average week in FY 2011. Even when we compared this workload decrease to end of FY 2010 data, this decline was significant. Other workloads, such as cases pulled and hearings held, did not appear to change. ODAR executives stated these Week 53 workload decreases may have related to some employees deferring certain workloads which did not count toward performance goals.
"may" have been related? Hmmm! Can anyone identify any other explanation for the workload decrease?
ReplyDeleteDidn't think so.
SSA has manipulated and played games with workload statistics for decades. It is an integral part of SSA management culture. If you suspect something like this is happening, it probably is. It will never change.
ReplyDeleteOf course this is performance related by management. I wonder how the public feels about having their disability cases delayed due to politics at SSA management.
ReplyDeleteActually, the work performed did not decrease. The amount of work reflected in the computer database did decrease.
ReplyDeleteSSA denies that it operates a quota system, but it does. The work finalized during week 53 would not have counted toward the quotas imposed on either the writers or the ALJs. No one stopped working but did stop moving cases in CPMS (the database) until they could get credit for the work performed.
The quotas are the root of many, but certainly not all of ODAR's problems. There simply isn't time to to the job properly.
Anon 8:40 has the right of it. Of all the work that is done in ODAR and FO's for that matter, only part of it is measured or has a targeted goal.
ReplyDeletePeople didn't stop working that week. They focused their efforts on processing lots of the other work that still needs to get done.
And yes, the problem lies in how SSA is overly focused on the numbers and not the process used to derived them.
How about FOs formally ordering staff to stop clearing redets for fear of exceeding targets? Managers have been threatened with disciplinary actions over this insanity. Yes, SSA is obsessed with numbers.
ReplyDeleteThis really is much ado about nothing. The cases that were written during the 53rd week, were all moved into edit on Monday of the following week, which corresponds to a delay of no more than 5 days later than they would have been moved.
ReplyDeleteAre we really complaining about 5 days (at the most)???
Ahhh..."goal"..."targeted"..."targeted goal"...2 of SSA's top 5 words.
ReplyDelete