Social Security has issued a press release boasting about Commissioner Saul improving service by keeping the agency's field offices open all day on Wednesdays.
I think this decision by Saul qualifies as one of, if not the, most bone-headed actions I can ever remember a Commissioner taking. This isn't going to improve service. It's going to hurt service. I'm pretty sure Saul did this not merely because he lacks understanding about how Social Security's field offices work but because he was unwilling to listen to those who do. I'm pretty sure all of those who do know advised against this. It also comes from an unshakeable belief that federal employees are lazy and that if you just crack the whip, you'll get better work out of them. That's naive. Inevitably in a large organization there are a few bad eggs but Social Security's service delivery problems come almost 100% from not having enough employees.
If you're like Saul and don't have an understanding about how field offices work you probably think that almost all the work a field office does is done while a claimant is sitting across the desk from a Social Security employee. A lot of it is but certainly not all. Let me give a few examples:
- Claimant has been approved for Supplemental Security Income. Information is needed from a former employer or a family member in order to compute the benefits. A field office employee has to make some calls.
- A claimant who has been overpaid mails in a check to pay down the overpayment. Someone has to enter that information into the agency's computer system and forward the check on to another office that completes action on the payment.
- A woman contacts the field office wondering whether she can get benefits on the account of her husband. He disappeared for unknown reasons eight years ago. The Social Security employee who has the case remembers something from their training years ago about this sort of situation but has to spend time looking at the agency's manual to determine how to handle this sort of case.
These and a thousand other types of tasks some mundane, some unusual, some taking only a little time, some taking a lot of time aren't done while a claimant sitting across the desk from the field office employee. You can't find that time if you've got a waiting room full of people many of whom are visibly impatient from having waited a long time to talk with someone. Things pile up. They don't get done. You don't gain by having the office open more hours; service actually get worse.
As you can tell if you read this blog, I'm extremely interested in the Social Security Administration giving better service to the public. Unlike Andrew Saul I actually know something about how the agency functions and I know this isn't just counterproductive. It's dumb, dumb, dumb. It's OK that Saul doesn't know exactly how things work at Social Security. What's not OK is that he clearly didn't listen to experienced staff on this one.
22 comments:
You can't kill socialist programs like Social Security until you undermine public confidence in those programs. Understaffing offices and then tasking employees to take in more from the public while reducing time available to actually do something is an outstanding start.
Don't forget getting medical/school records on disability claims. Setting up CEs. etc etc etc
Never confuse incompetence for conspiracy.
As a hard working FO employee, I can assure you he will regret this ill-informed decision. As you stated, work will simply get more and more backlogged - more than it already is. This will in turn create even more office traffic. In particular, time consuming complex cases will sit and collect dust.
Hiring 0 new field office staff and increasing their public hours by 10% is a recipe for failure.
If he thinks the 100 PSC workers and 1000 TSC workers he's hiring are going to take up the slack that's just a fantasy. SSA *loses* 1000 TSC workers a year. They will probably have lost over 1500 by the time the 1000 new ones are trained. And the PSC backlog is what, 4 million items? If you could average 25 items per person per day (which seems high to me...some of the most complicated ones probably take more than a day each!) you'd need 640 people to get through it.
FO employees tend to do the quickest easiest items first, the more complicated work is going to sit and age, and age. He's set this up to fail before he even started the first quarter of his term. Telework was just a kick in the nads, the re-opening Wednesday afternoon is an organizational disaster in FOs. In my FO staffed by 25 people we see on average 250-300 people a day. On your average Wednesday we would see around 120-150. We were able to catch our breath in the afternoon and process cases and work on the more technical cases. Good luck doing that now! Work will be shifted to the more technical savvy employees who are already bogged down with others work and it's going to turn into a great s-show. I would not be shocked if people left the agency because if the low morale/lack of belief in this agencies operating principles at this point.
Every civilized western country has a retirement and disability program. In fact, I would say that such "socialist" programs are a key to maintaining a functioning middle class democracy. Funny how many of the folks that went through the Great Depression didn't think of these programs as socialist but rather an absolute necessity in this country. I understand the billionaires want to drown social security but I would argue that it's not even in their long term best interest if they want to enjoy their wealth in functioning societies. Maybe they truly see the Russian mafia-oligarch way of doing things as superior to democracy.
I can see longer interviews and longer wait times in offices. May just be easier for employees to do all the behind the scenes work while the claimant is there in the office since there may not be time later to do it.
@ 4:27
Take a broader look at recent actions and proposals and what does the pattern tell you? 0 new staff are hired and workload is increased by increasing public hours. The state DDS agencies are not being approved to fill all their positions needed to do their jobs as they should (see earlier post "Starving DDS"). Policies that have been proven to increase staff work production are cancelled. Grid rules, which allow quicker and more efficient adjudication of claims, appear to be under attack. The new NPRM on continuing disability reviews proposes doing 2 million additional CDRs with this already overburdened and increasingly demoralized staff.
I would feel more hopeful and less inclined to attribute unflattering motives to the current leadership, if it was lobbying the President and Congress hard to get funding for the increased staffing needed to provide quality service and fulfill its additional ambitious goals. I have not heard yet of any such efforts.
And I walked out the door as both a TII and TXVI CR and never looked back. 4 of the 5 folks I did my initial training with in TXVI lasted less than 5 years. I miss the pay and cheap benefits a little, but my life is much much better!
I'm not sure what to think. Overwhelmingly, it seems those that support President Trump think the changes are a good idea, and those who oppose President Trump think the changes are a bad idea. I long for a time when everyone wants out country to do well, regardless of who is in office.
I lasted 4 decades from Carter on and raised thru the ranks. My wanting to serve the public was the most important thing to me. In spite of the politics and regulations I feel I made a difference in lives. Sometimes you have to have grit and resilience.
@10:45
Yeah, I'm sure disagreeing with SSA opening field offices for Wednesday afternoons is simply just a political disagreement, without valid arguments against this action, particularly that this will in fact result in less assistance in the end because this time period was pretty much the only time in which more complicated matters could be addressed without distraction.
Oh, also presuming everyone wants the country to fail just because they disagree with something you think will result in the country succeeding; this is a totally rationale position to take, and not a self-fulfilling prophecy which is actually exactly what is resulting in societal strife you are criticizing.
Can we all just agree that Saul is an asshole for making the first two paragraphs of his first public statement all about himself?
And a really big asshole for taking the rest of that statement to crap all over his own employees to the public?
If Saul had half a brain or actually asked some questions of his subordinates, he'd see that IT is the huge issue for the agency. Balkanized programs, translucent-thin web browser overlays of green-screen PCOM inputs. A million little "why in hell would they do it this way?" decisions.
But, fixing IT issues isn't as sexy for Republicans as flogging the old lazy government worker chestnut.
The beating will become more frequent until morale improves
@11:49
But, morale will NOT improve until all the beating, et. al., stops. Thus, it is a vicious circle. Clearly, SSA management does NOT understand this and is completely clueless, largely because most are unqualified to be in those positions in the first place. You cannot effectively manage a 21st century workforce with dinosaur managerial and personnel policies from the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries.
In an office of 28 at least 3 people who planned to wait until next year to retire will instead opt to retire now and 4 others are actively looking for another job. That's only canvassing half the office. Good luck and god speed. The pay and benefits are not worth it.
Well stated in this article. Poor human capital management! Stakeholders inside and outside the Agency will suffer and skilled, trained employees will leave for greener pastures.
Well said all. I left sooner than I had planned. In spite of the leadership program s many managers are willing to throw subordinates and other managers under the bus. Promotion is the name of the game. Civility and collaboration are only skin deep.
Our FO workers work past 5 and on Saturdays now. That Wednesday was their chance to work on more difficult tasks that required some time and attention. The other cabinet members of this administration are appointed to destroy from within their departments so this is par for the course.
It's only dumb because Saul doesn't understand that the public service problems are due to constant understaffing and computer systems that are at least a decade behind... :P
As far as liberal/conservative beliefs go: It's pretty common for a conservative to think people (other than themselves, or their buddies) are lazy. In contrast, a liberal places more weight on systemic issues. The plain fact to anyone that has worked for the SSA is that the workloads are overbearing, and there isn't enough time to do everything that is "supposed" to be done on a case, not by a long shot. So, many "shortcutting" strategies come into play. Across the years... workloads go up, "systems improvements" actually add more steps to the work, rather than streamlining it, more claims/claimants per day as the years go by, and hiring doesn't keep up.
Some employees at the PC are just bad. I suspect there are people like this at the FO as well.
I am assisting a claimant pro bono that was recently approved at an ALJ hearing.
PC has had the file for 2 months. It’s awaiting a correction as the 2nd sign off erroneously subtracted representative fees even though the ALJ explicitly denied them in a separate order. So the process has to go through the sign offs again only to have someone deduct even more fees. Now they will have to do it again.
The incompetence runs deep. It appears staff at the PC can’t be bothered to read or simply don’t know how to.
Most frustrating is the fact that none of the module
Managers answer their phones or return messages. Are they still employed? Maybe they’re at home teleworking and can’t be bothered.
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