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Dec 23, 2019

Update From Commissioner Saul

      An e-mail message to staff from Andrew Saul, Commissioner of Social Security:
Subject: Budget Update

    I am happy to report that the President signed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, which funds our work through September 2020. Knowing our budget for fiscal year 2020 allows us to better plan hiring and make other funding decisions. Our approved budget is about the same amount as last year. This legislation also contained an average 3.1 percent pay raise for Federal employees, effective in January 2020.
    As I have said, our fundamental goal is to ensure timely and accurate service for the public. We will focus our funding on improving service and reducing wait times. We will build on our progress in reducing the disability hearings backlog and modernizing our information technology. We must also continue to protect the integrity of our programs by processing our medical continuing disability reviews as they come due for a review.

    We have already started efforts to maximize our resources for the front lines. I asked our leadership team to closely review all of our spending to identify any opportunities to reduce costs and to redirect any savings to our direct service operations. I have been visiting local offices to better understand your concerns and hear your ideas for improvement. Based on your input and feedback from systems experts, as well as the top reasons people contact or visit us, we are developing new, customer-centric automation to better support you and the public we serve. We are also enhancing our website to make it easier for people to find and use our online information and services.

    You handle an incredible amount of work, helping millions of people a year. Therefore, I understand that in addition to better tools and technology, you want more people to help you serve the public. I already approved 1,100 hires in the processing centers (PC) and on the National 800 Number. While we still need to work through the details of our budget, I intend to fund additional hiring in field offices, PCs, the National 800 Number, and the State disability determination services.

    Thank you for your hard work and dedication to public service. We have made progress. We are on track to meet our commitment to eliminate our hearings backlog next year. Our service on the National 800 Number is better now than it was this time last year. Yet, there is still more we need to do, and we will use this funding to continue to improve.

    Andrew Saul
    Commissioner
     Without knowing more, I wouldn't get a bit happy about the 1,100 hires. On its face that's a small number but there's a long history of Social Security Commissioners announcing hiring plans without mentioning that the hires weren't new positions, just replacements for workers who were leaving. Sometimes there's a net staff loss despite the hiring.

8 comments:

  1. The 800 number is almost useless, and I've seen no improvement from last year. The wait time to get a human is ridiculous. Then the person who answers can't give much of an answer. There needs to be more training for the folks on the 800 number.
    The website is pretty good. I just hope the web that the workers have to use is good.
    I don't know how keeping the office open Wednesday afternoon is benefiting anyone. Employees need that afternoon to work on more difficult cases.

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    Replies
    1. If you saw what was hired for the 800 #. Why aren't the TEs doing the complex cases. The get grade 12s and can work Saturday. That's why they were created.

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  2. There will not be improvement due to Commissioner Saul's actions. His reputation is pretty much shot at the SSA Payment centers due to his taking our telework away without good reason. This has been devastating for employee morale. I really don't care what he has to say at this point, I don't trust the man and I think he has terrible judgement.

    I will continue to work as hard as I can while at work, I am serving the public. However I am now forced to take more leave to avoid traffic and meet personal responsibilities, so I will be working less cases overall in 2020, and I know many other employees are in the same boat.
    I expect SSA backlogs to increase due to recent decisions Saul has made. Forcing the SSA FO to stay open on Wednesdays was another bad decisio\n. . The FO needs some time without the public there, so they can work on important job duties other than interviewing. Such as input of workers' compensation computations, input of expedited reinstatement awards, etc. Without Wednesdays available for the FO to work on these cases, there will be delays in processing and more errors for the payment centers to correct.

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  3. TEs do work the most complex cases. FO OT was cut out last August with only a few dismal hours thrown their way. And what OT was handed out was limited to RZs and Medical CDRs only. Hard to work those cases with no OT and spending your days acting as a CS/CSR.

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  4. What is really unfortunate is that there is no mention of telework here. This guy is simply ignoring the requests and isn’t realizing how this hurts the mission. My team is on the east coast, we are responsible for coverage to the west coast. On telework days we had coverage from 6am est to 6 pm est. without telework nobody’l works past 3 or 3:30 pm because of traffic, which means if you are in the west coast you better contact us before your lunch because after 12:30 pm PST there is nobody in the office. And it’s a shame.

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  5. Is it possible that maybe the commissioner thinks a lot a of folks at SSA are lazy? If so, he would not be the only one that thinks that.

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  6. Yeah, Saul thinks SSA folks are lazy. That's why he has been offline and out of the office for over 42 days straight. Maybe he's gone into hiding and is managing SSA remotely.

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  7. anon@11:06pm,

    He's teleworking, of course.

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