From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
SSA is developing DCPS [Disability Case Processing System] as a common system for all DDSs [Disability Determination Services]. The Agency expects DCPS will simplify system support and maintenance, improve the speed and quality of the disability process, and reduce the overall growth rate of infrastructure costs.
SSA is using an incremental approach to develop and deploy DCPS. In December 2016, the Agency released its first working software to three DDSs, enabling them to process certain types of disability claims. Since then, the Agency has developed and implemented new releases that have provided additional functionality and has made the system available to users in 10 DDSs.
In November 2017, SSA postponed rolling DCPS out to additional DDSs and focused its resources on development. The Agency also concentrated on increasing the numbers of DCPS users at participating DDSs and cases they process in the system. ...
We asked users to respond to the statement, “Overall, I am satisfied with DCPS.” Of the 120 users who responded,
In general, users liked the modern interface, DCPS’ ease of use, and their ability to work on multiple cases simultaneously. Administrators and users also indicated they would like more functionality. For example, because DCPS lacked certain functionality, users had to employ workarounds to process certain cases. In addition, users had to follow up on evidence requests outside the system. Further, users commented about their inability to effectively manage their caseload s in DCPS . ...
- 69 (58 percent ) either agreed or strongly agreed;
- 28 (23 percent) either disagreed or strongly disagreed;
- 17 (14 percent) neither agreed nor disagreed; and
- 6 (5 percent) did not respond to the statement.
In December 2017, the 10 participating DDSs completed 797 cases in DCPS (about 2 percent of their workload). In May 2018, they completed 1,543 cases (about 4 percent of their workload).
SSA recognized that its inability to convince DDS users of the value and advantage of DCPS may negatively affect DDS adoption rates. To address this, the Agency planned to continue working with users to develop and demonstrate working software. ...A year and a half into the project and we're only up to a handful of DDS units processing 4% of their workload using DCPS? At that rate, DCPS might be fully implemented in another 50-75 years.
3 comments:
It is not "a year and a half into the project". It is almost 10 years into the project. And the cost of the DCPS effort has been enormous. SSA's cost figures do not include their labor costs, which is of course the major part of any software development effort. I believe total DCPS costs to date are between $1B and $2B. Meanwhile, the legacy state systems continue to process the national workload extremely effectively, and SSA prevents the legacy software provider from modernizing the user interface, at no charge to the state DDSs, in order to help justify their drive to replace it.
...but I thought Rob Klopp turned DCPS from a "dud" to a "stud?"
Are you saying he was LYING?
The OIG report was as of May, 2018 - 5 months ago. The functionality that is there is working quite well and has expanded since that time. Every couple of months there is new functionality added and sites are beginning to process more cases. One state is now processing all new initial claims in DCPS.
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