From Letter to the Public on Service by Andrew Saul:
I want to update you about how things are going at the Social Security Administration. ...
We are currently testing drop box and express appointment options for the public to bring in documentation. ...
[I]f you do need to replace your card, we are testing video appointments if you need a new Social Security card but do not need to change any of the information in our records. Although ideas like these began as solutions during COVID-19, we are considering how they could improve service in the future. Some of these concepts also allow us to consider how we might continue to use telework, something that most organizations and companies have depended on during the COVID-19 pandemic, to drive longer-term operational efficiencies like reducing space. We could use those savings to provide you more online service options and hire more people to serve you more quickly as well as to retain outstanding employees. We will continue to engage our managers, employees, and unions on ways we could use telework to improve customer service and other issues. ...
As we contemplate the future, we are delivering now. To help improve deteriorating service, we have added over 6,000 frontline employees to help you. We decreased the average wait to talk to our 800 Number agents by one-third and reduced the agent busy rate by over 50 percent in the last two years, and our 800 Number agents handled 1.6 million more calls than they did a year ago.
During the pandemic, we shifted service to the telephone where local office employees answered 13 million more calls last year than they did in fiscal (FY) 2019. They answered your calls in under 3 minutes on average compared to an average wait of nearly 24 minutes in FY 2019. ...
The pandemic has significantly disrupted parts of our disability process, particularly at the state Disability Determination Services (DDS) that make disability determinations for us. We have provided the DDSs with additional hiring and overtime to help address a significant increase in pending initial disability cases. The DDSs have been able to reduce the number of people waiting for a decision on initial disability claims by about 100,000 cases since the height of the pending cases in August 2020. In order to make initial disability decisions as quickly as possible, and to reduce the burden on the medical community still stressed from the pandemic, we have focused our limited resources on completing initial requests for disability benefits and have reduced the number of continuing disability reviews we are conducting. ...
I don't know how to describe this letter as anything other than delusional. This letter talks as if service has actually improved instead of deteriorating during Covid-19! I'm out here dealing with the agency and I can tell you emphatically that isn't true. Dealing with the agency has become more and more difficult. Backlogs are soaring on disability claims at the initial and reconsideration levels. This letter cherry picks a few stats that have improved during Covid-19 while ignoring the mass of other stats that would show declining service. The thing that gets me most is the claim to have hired over 6,000 frontline employees. Could Social Security have hired 6,000 employees in the last year? Sure, but they were mostly replacing existing workers who were leaving. There's been little net increase in the agency's workforce. In March 2020, Social Security had 60,659 employees. In December 2020, the agency had 61,816 employees. That's an increase of 1,157 employees, not 6,000, nothing more than a wobble in the numbers. No, I don't think they've hired 5,000 new employees since the end of last year. The idea that Social Security could increase its workforce by about 10% while its operating budget in real dollars has gone down is bonkers.
Everything in his letter is true. However, it doesn't come close to telling the whole story. Service is more difficult, but our employees are dong what they can to take care of the public. Every day I get calls transferred to me from an upset customer, more so because they can't conduct business as they used to. We are a year into this and I hope we see some return to work this summer.
ReplyDeleteReading between the lines, SSA is probably planning on shuttering most, if not all, field offices at the end of their current leases.
ReplyDeleteNew Normal doesnt mean a better normal.
ReplyDelete9:59--if you can discern office closings from this letter you should get to the racetrack quick :)
ReplyDeleteLooks like telework is here to stay and will be helpful to get outstanding employees to serve the public instead of just a body in a desk.
ReplyDelete@10:43 The release explicitly mentions continued telework will drive “longer term efficiencies like reducing space.” You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!
ReplyDeleteIsnt the body at a desk at home, running the dishwasher, swapping loads of laundry....
ReplyDeleteinteresting that the fo check in app wasnt mentioned...
ReplyDeleteThe changes made during COVID to "Stay afloat" should be considered an increase in flexibility, and eventually and increase in service levels if they continue to be used after COVID. But this is basing it against pre-COVID service. The service during COVID cant count because its unprecedented. Imagine if this had happened prior to broadband internet!
ReplyDeleteThey aren't going to close field offices en masse. Even if getting rid of all/nearly all of them were the plan, it wouldn't happen that quickly (I don't think that's the plan anyway).
ReplyDeleteWhat SSA will do with much more earnestness than it has in the last decade is start cutting back on its space (with lots of prodding from GSA, like the recent reduction of some FC or other HQ area office space recently).
I think more telework is here to stay, and between that and the new OHO HO setup (only the one GS 14 manager and all the judges get offices--everyone else in cubes) SSA will start aggressively cutting total square footage when leases come up. Probably a few closures and co-locations (FO or DO with an OHO HO), but mostly just leasing significantly fewer square feet in the same locations when new leases are entered into.
to follow up my previous comment...
ReplyDeleteWhy don't I think closure of all or many FOs/DOs/HOs is the plan? Because, despite all their (numerous and significant) faults, one good thing I can say about SSA brass is that many, many of them are super duper committed to very robust physical presence in the field with lots of face to face interactions. That and their complete aversion to ever furloughing an SSA employee are pretty much the only good widely-held SSA upper mgmt traits/desires I can think of.
And they will continue to treat the employees like garbage, which is why the exodus will continue. And if you all really think they're not going to severely curtail telework at the first possible moment, you haven't been paying attention. They will argue that in-person service is desperately needed by vulnerable populations that cannot access the internet, yada yada. It's window dressing for the same anti-employee animus, only dressed up for the new bosses as if it were deep concern for the public.
ReplyDeleteI want to know when we can start telework from another state like the commissioner does.
ReplyDeleteHiring 6000 employees during a pandemic seems pretty amazing to me. Most of them were replacing folks who left but still pretty good to be able to hire like that. He put lipstick on a pig but looked to me like what he said was true w/ some spin on it.
ReplyDeleteSome offices may be closed in the long term but Congressional folks like to say they kept an office in their district vs they lost one so I don't think that many offices will close soon.
@7:27 PM There is very little concern for the health and safety of employees at SSA. Given the pandemic, it is ridiculously stupid to have folks working in close proximity in cubicles, which seems to be the trend for hearing offices. And, it certainly does not help maximize productivity when it's louder than a school playground given the tedious nature of the work. And the GS manager should not even have an office for they do virtually no work that makes any difference. Why that job even exists is a great mystery.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems we have faced is this.
ReplyDeleteAt a time when the agency went to 100% telework - which necessarily means relying more heavily on the mail service - mail service cratered and has still not recovered.
Basically a PR man. Better call Saul.
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ReplyDeleteI work in a PSC as a Claims Specialist. No overtime for months and its impossible to keep up with out workload without OT.
ALJ allowances, post entitlement workers' comp adjustments, reconsiderations on workers' comp and overpayments: All these cases are sitting in backlogs. Was it Saul's idea to cut almost all PSC overtime and give it to DDS?
@954..We don't have any overtime in the FO either. Not sure what the cause but doesn't Congress and the President determine the budget for SSA? We have just been told there isn't any money for OT.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not telework that is the Devil here. Imagine being (like so many around the country) a single parent with kids placed on virtual learning forcing you to be their teacher while you work full time in the same room as multiple kids. On top of that after years focused on a specific workload, the agency sees the crisis (obviously fair) switches not only case types, evidentiary standards based on case type, then because so many DDS’s are in trouble they ask you to do new case types in numerous different states which all have different payment amounts for CEs, medical records, etc. In addition they all have vendor files to request records that don’t match up so doing intake for the day can take all day. Then you have to follow their process to even request an exam which is different in each state. After that you have to find the requisite warnings, authorizations and in some cases medical consultant approval to order an X-ray for an issue you have known for 15 years will need one- but this state needs to put that kink in the system. So that even ordering an exam which should take five minutes now takes at a minimum 30 minutes to review script, research whatever local rules must be followed, then sit on that for another day or two while MC evaluates the need for an X-ray. Then add in the handling of paper claims with restrictions from the administration on how many can be in the office when some are already there to do mail... which means we are capped at in office staff allowed. So - telework, actual telework - works. I know. Did it successfully for years. This isn’t telework... this is forced part-time teacher, full-time employee living in a box for a year with more job and workload shifts than could possibly be conveyed. Then if you try to work late to make up from the hell of distractions from kids asking questions, they advise you that working late is an integrity issue. (Normal sectors would say it absolutely is about integrity- showing how much I have for working late to try to balance the lives in my hands with the kids in my home) - not SSA... you can’t do that you appear to have questionable integrity for working too long. FML
ReplyDeleteDear 9:50pm, It is painfully clear that you are being set up for failure. The powers that be don't want SSA employees or its poor, disabled constituents to succeed...
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