The Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs has resigned because VA employees were found to have been playing games to make their agency's backlog stats look better than they actually were. I don't think that there's been any serious game playing like this at Social Security, at least not at the macro level. The problems lie more with the fact that no one with any current power is excited about the growing backlogs at Social Security.
4 comments:
You don't think SSA offices game their appointment system and workload management systems? How about opening slots to give the appearance of an available appointment within x number of days? How about taking clearly ineligible SSI applications (not really in the interest of protecting eligibility)? SSA is not squeaky clean and various management tricks have been going on for decades. Management awards and promotions were given to those who mastered these techniques.
Can't say that it's still happening, but for decades SSA took a passive aggressive approach diddling around with work CDRs and medical CDRs. SSA's management by objective approach managed (hounded) DOs about processing time for all initial claims, enumeration, and month-by-month goals for processing redets. Nothing -- nada -- zilch in goals for processing the CDRs.
If it's true, as some say, that Astrue and his cronies happily looked the other way while the SSA backlog was "paid down" (all the while bragging about the reduction in pending cases) then they should have been the ones resigning instead of getting away with acting so surprised when the WSJ exposed the Huntington office shenanigans - as if upper management had no idea what was going on. Does anyone really believe that they didn't know exactly what was going on, if not actually, then constructively?
SSA most definitely has similar problems. The entire across the board 500-700 production goal for ALJs, regardless of their size files or annual leave/sick time, is how's that. In some offices, those with smaller files, it is easier to meet that goal while still dreading the full file. However, in offices where the files are large, ALJs who meet production do so only by giving the file a cursory review. Thus, some claimants are wrongfully granted benefits, and others are wrongfully denied. ODAR top management knows this, but does not care because they are primarily interested in production. Always have been and, absent a significant shift towards professionalism at the top, always will be.
Post a Comment