From the Washington Post:
David Broomell, a longtime Social Security programmer and project manager, has been instrumental in creating new ways to make visits to Social Security offices more customer-friendly through innovative information technology solutions. At the same time, he has developed new computer tools for employees, allowing them to offer more timely and efficient assistance to beneficiaries. ...
Going back more than a decade, Broomell helped transform an inefficient manual system used to check in and process visitors at Social Security offices nationwide by creating an automated intake process. He continually upgraded the system to include touch screen monitors, TV wait-time displays and real-time management of information. ...
Broomell, who works near Minneapolis, currently is collaborating with IT colleagues at the Social Security headquarters in Baltimore on a nationwide rollout of a new centralized web-based customer-intake process. This will replace Broomell’s visitor process system, which has operated through separate computer servers housed at each individual Social Security office around the country. ...
He created a web-based application to identify administrative appeals involving Social Security disability claims that had been decided but were not fully processed and therefore delayed the reporting of the judicial rulings. Broomell’s system replaced a labor-intensive, manual process fraught with errors that enabled the agency to clean up its records and report the appeal decisions in a fraction of the time.
Dave is the perfect example of what a local field office employee can accomplish, solving needs, compared to the paper pushing, make it so but don't rock the boat efforts more commonly found at area, regional, and central office headquarters. Although he worked with other local field office employees, including those from other regions in the beginning and as he continued his efforts to develop and modify his program, he demonstrated that great ideas can overcome inertia.
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