The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has posted an interview it did with Andrew Saul. Here are some excerpts with emphasis added:
... On one of my first field trips, I happened to notice on the door that we closed at 12 o'clock on Wednesdays. I frankly couldn't believe it, because we were losing basically 10 percent of our available time to service our customers by being closed on Wednesday afternoons. ...
The 800 number, that has been a major problem, major concern for all our customers. If you called in, you would find you had an unacceptable waiting time — sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 40 minutes. So, what we've done is we've immediately hired about 1,100 new operators.
Our call time right now is down by about 50 percent. We've got farther to go, but I think if you watch over the next six months, we will get the call centers down to the proper waiting time, which will be close to zero. That's a prediction that I'm willing to make here, and I believe we will succeed in doing this. ...
We're reorganizing how the offices operate and how we handle the customers from the time they walk in the door. If you look at our field offices, over a third of our customers come in for card replacements, and another 20 percent come in for benefit statements. So we are now working on a process where customers coming in for a simple task like that are routed to an express agent, and they don't have to sit there and wait in the office for an agent who deals with more complicated tasks.
This sounds so simple, but if you think about it, almost 50 percent of our customers coming into the offices were waiting like somebody that had a very complicated problem, which is crazy. ...
Quite frankly, I don't think that we did the job we should have done [in fighting scams] over the last few years as this problem arose. ...
We have to modernize our disability operation. Some of our regulations are 40 years, 50 years outdated. We had a workforce 50 years ago that was very different than it is today: many more manual tasks, much more hard labor, for example, many more mining jobs, much more manufacturing. Today, it's much more office work.
Also, don't forget, health care has completely changed in the last 50 years. Fortunately, some diseases that affect a lot of people today, 50 years ago, if you were diagnosed with that disease, you were finished. Today, a lot of productive people have had serious strokes, heart attacks, cancer. Very, very life-threatening diseases. Today, we have medicine that has really cured the problems and allowed people to go on with very successful lives.
It's important that the disability plan services those people that really are in need of it, and that are really in bad shape. ...I think Saul is sounding two clear theme:
- The people who came before him were idiots who couldn't see simple solutions to problems, which is very Trumpian.
- He believes anybody can do office work and that's about all that's left in the U.S. economy and, besides, medicine has dramatically reduced the amount of disability, so there shouldn't be so many people drawing Social Security disability, which is very naive.
Saul's idea about creating an express lane isn't a terrible one, but I imagine it would depend on how well-staffed the particular field office is. A better solution might be to just place a kiosk in the lobby (actually, I recall every field office I've been in already had a kiosk for getting your line number, so they could just expand it's functionality), and allow the individual to request a card replacement or benefit statement through that. Also, I think these types of requests can be made online, so maybe increase public awareness of that.
ReplyDeleteAs to modernizing SSA and recognizing vocational changes, there are less manual tasks, but more skilled tasks, and that reality is accounted for in the use of VEs who explain how the job is generally performed. Yeah the exertion and skill levels are binding, but not a lot of jobs have shifted whole categories even in the modern economy. A cashier was a light occupation 50 years ago, and it still is. A secretary is a sedentary occupation and it still is.
Medically, as best as I can tell, Saul is arguing SSA shouldn't assume conditions are terminal or that recovery won't occur. 1, conditions terminal 50 years ago are still pretty terminal and the ones that aren't, no longer meet/equal listings and are no longer on the list of compassionate allowances. 2, SSA doesn't assume conditions won't improve, that's what the CDR program is all about. 3, disabled people could always "go on with very successful lives," they just can't sustain work which exists in significant numbers in the national economy.
It’s funny that he talks about an express lane like it’s the first time anyone has thought of that. Those have been and are being used to varying degrees of success in offices across the country already. As with everything in life, the devil is in the details.
ReplyDeleteI’ve worked in field offices for over 20 years now. There is no low hanging fruit. If a new commissioner or other person looks and sees a simple solution that everyone else is too dumb or lazy to implement, there’s probably a good reason why it hasn’t already been implemented.
Nothing new under the sun. Unless you think you are always the smartest person in the room.
@9:07 "As to modernizing SSA and recognizing vocational changes, there are less manual tasks, but more skilled tasks, and that reality is accounted for in the use of VEs who explain how the job is generally performed."
ReplyDeleteMy experience through many ALJ hearings with VE testimony is that VEs parrot the DOT job requirements and don't testify as to how jobs have changed since last updated in that document. I have never, even once, heard an ALJ ask a VE how a job may have changed since last updated in the DOT (meaning ALJs almost universally don't care if they are relying on potentially obsolete information). If you do ask a VE at a hearing how a job has changed since last updated in the DOT, VEs frequently testify the job has not changed when a review of more recent DOL data shows they obviously have changed (meaning the VE's typically don't bother to check). The system is broken. If SSA cared about doing better, then it would require adjudicators to ask the VE if jobs have changed since last updated in the DOT, and VEs would be required to actually exert due diligence to check.
Call time waiting reduction has been amazing!!!! I can't believe what has been accomplished with this in such a short time!!! I'm so glad to get the buzzing sound so much more often so I know to hang up immediately. Now t you don't have to be on hold for thirty minutes before the automatic disconnection.
ReplyDeleteExpress lanes work if you have enough staff. Offices ended up using management to man SHPCs and express lines.
ReplyDeleteEducating the part of the public that doesn't have computer literacy is the other challenge.
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ReplyDelete1,100 is not a lot of "new" operators, that job is a revolving door. The agency probably lost 2,000 operators since Christmas.
The fact that he intends to get the call time down to zero shows how unrealistic his goals are.
He also sounds like a kid who barely read the book but is asked by the teacher to give a synopsis. "You know medicine has changed, jobs have changed, things change."
Disability claimants and beneficiaries are the easiest group for the trump administration to rob. They certainly will not touch grandma and grandpa benefits. Its that simple. It's laughable,give money(tax cuts)to the rich and
ReplyDeleteform legal theories to take from the impaired helpless or near helpless impaired poor.
Sounds like Saul will be great and bad.
ReplyDeleteHe might be great in basic procedures like call times and waiting times at the local SSA offices. If has already reduced call times 50 percent, then kudos (I am not sure it might not revert back).
But he is going to be very bad everywhere else especially in tightening the standards to get on disability. This is not just Trumpian but overall conservative. Like many conservatives, they have this idea that everybody can get and work a job in a good economy. It's just that easy. They will not hear otherwise and acknowledge other factors like disability, race, gender, age, etc. To do so would threaten this utopia where capitalism always is best. He is going to be a disaster on that front.
Better call Saul.
I have my doubts that people waiting in the SSA field office lobby for a long time, will be happy to see others bypass them in the "express lane".
ReplyDeleteAlso Saul failed to mention the disadvantages of forcing the FO to remain open on Wednesday and all the types of work that used to be accomplished on Wed afternoon is now not getting done.
And what about the damage to employee morale caused by forcing all the FO open again on Wed afternoons, and his ending telework for employees?
Like so many that come to Social Security disability from outside, Saul is filled with media produced misunderstanding of just what is disability and who is found to be disabled by the SSA.
ReplyDeleteYes, the work force has changed, but the people filing for disability have not participated in that change. Approximately 10% of the national population has less than a high school education but that is true of about 28% of the people on disability.
The most disabling impairment that I see is depression.Not feeling sad, as the blogosphere suggests, but depression that leads to a person simply giving up on life. There has been very little medical improvement in treatment of severe depression.
It is increasingly difficult for people to qualify for disability whatever condition they have. And the new workplace that demands skills and education is not the place for the majority of older and poorly education claimants. Saul is living in a world that he doesn't really understand and mouthing what he has heard from Mulvaney and the like.
I suggest for him to do what I have never seen a Commissioner do. Go to a hearing offie or two and see the people there and talk to them. And, be willing to talk to those who are in the field with the disability program, including those claimants but also claimants' representative and ALJs and Hearing Office Staff and even people who treat at mental health clinics and other medical providers. So far, I have seen no evidence of Saul being willing to do any other that.
So everyone keeps mentioning that there is work that used to get done on Wednesday but isn’t getting done anymore. Is that true? Is there work just sitting there now? Did FO staff just give up and let it sit?
ReplyDeleteWhat do tens of thousands of comments, media attention, and congressional scrutiny on the CDR proposal mean? It means the public is focused on any attempt SSA will make to cut disability or other Social Security benefits through regulation or policy. Whomever at SSA is proposing such changes will be called out for it by an angry public and that anger will be amplified by the media and Congress. Any cuts to the disability program in any form would be extremely unpopular. All those proposing such changes at SSA will gain by attempts to cut disability benefits is that righteous anger that we the people reserve for bullies who pick on vulnerable people in our society. You will find that the disability community, their families, and friends and people of good conscience will stand united against any further such attempts.
ReplyDeleteFeatures, not bugs. All the negative effects on employee morale (and thus performance and attrition) and service are desired outcomes.
ReplyDeleteThey want to shrink the size of the federal workforce and they want to make SSA so bad at running itself that the public turns on it and will entertain the idea of Republicans putting those billions and billions of dollars into the hands of their friends on Wall Street to manage (read: run less efficiently than the government did while giving lower returns to beneficiaries all while making billions of their own through skimming fees).
And there's nothing agency employees can do as all the middle and upper management types are either clueless and/or careerist cowards (or worse--many are ecstatic over the new pain coming employees' way) who won't use the bit of power they have to slow the coming storm or protect employees from the worst of it. The biggest union already rolled over on fighting SSA in exchange for some private office space of its own. The game's over, only thing to do at this point is sit back and watch it unfold.
The beatings are going to continue until a new presidential administration and probably new commissioner are in place. Good luck! And a special thanks to all those SSA employees who hate these changes yet voted for the guy from the party who has been screaming about and trying to do these precise things for decades. Hope you're not retirement eligible and have to either suffer or leave like the rest of us!
Well said. Do you think members of the NCSSAMA have your best interests at heart? When Saul was nominated and put in place so many managers were falling over themselves to be his Toadies. The careerists only have their self interests at heart.
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