Social Security's budget justification for the next fiscal year included numbers indicating a big productivity decline at its Office of Hearings Operations (OHO) during the pandemic. I would guess that the agency has productivity indices for other components. If there are such productivity indices, it seems to me that the agency should release them to the public. I think they would be crucial information which should be used in making decisions on when and how Social Security reopens its offices. If they don't show productivity declines, the continuation of extensive telework is justified. If they do show productivity declines, agency employees and their unions shouldn't make a fuss when telework goes back to pre-pandemic levels or, at least if they do, they shouldn't expect much sympathy from others. However, even if field office productivity indices show no decline as a result of telework (which I doubt), the field offices must reopen to to the public. It's abundantly clear that there is a strong public demand for this level of service. The Social Security Administration exists to serve the public.
Jun 28, 2021
Show Us The Numbers
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Besides the comments on this blog, what evidence do you have of the public demand that is so abundantly clear that the FOs need to reopen? Congress doesn’t feel any pressure, the White House doesn’t seem to be directing any specific pressure, the commissioner hasn’t indicated this. In my region, we don’t have a media blitz, overwhelming calls or letters, or anything indicating this. I am not saying offices need to be closed forever, but I’m curious why you feel like there is overwhelming demand among the genera public nationwide. That’s a pretty strong premise for us all to assume is correct, I’d just like to know where it’s coming from.
Charles, the whole agency has production indices. SSA is one large assembly line. Every single employee in the Agency except management has production standards.
I like how this post lacks all nuance. Any reduction at all in productivity? Telework is a massive failure and should return to "pre-pandemic levels," which I can only assume means you agree with Saul's cuts.
Productivity decline, or case decline? OHO receives requests for hearing but doesn't initiate them. We crushed what little work we did get. As a rep, did your number of RFHs increase or decrease during the lockdown? Ours sure did decrease. Not as a fault of OHO but as a function of the decrease in cases.
I think it would be difficult to measure productivity. unless there is a way to exclude overtime hours from the calculations.
PC7 had severe cutbacks in overtime in 2020 - 2021. For example, Claims Specialist overtime was gradually cut from an average of 32 hours per pay (two weeks) in early 2020, to no overtime at all, for most of 2021. Only very recently overtime was restored, but only at 16 hours per pay period (8 hours each Saturday).
Therefore the total number of cases completed in PC7 has dropped , but cases completed per hour worked has not decreased.
Yes, my productivity has declined but it has nothing to do with telework. The agency isn't getting enough receipts to provide me with the number of dockets I requested.
Now that's gonna change when the dam bursts, and we will all be overwhelmed again and pushing out more decisions and productivity will rise. If we are not telecommuting at that point, then the agency will use that as an excuse to limit it.
I think the decline in SSI cases tends to show the field offices should be open to in-person contact. Unfortunately, there are a lot of citizens who need the in-person access to pursue benefits.
It seems rather evident to anyone who deals regularly with SSA that local offices need to reopen soon as a result of the services that the public cannot receive online. For example, not everyone is savvy enough to understand the online application process. Some people need to have things explained to them face to face in order to understand. And the word from OHO has been that productivity went UP during telework and supposedly there are several reliable metrics to back that up. I agree that we need some additional transparency with the Agency, for sure and that showing us the numbers they are relying on would help. Regardless, the local offices must reopen and the sooner the better.
There are too many risks related to returning to in-office work. Commuting alone, by private automobile or public transportation, involves significant risk exposure. Thousands of people die each year in motor vehicle accidents and many more are victimized by assailants while using public transportation. A person's home is the safest place to work, with the exception of the use of stairs which are a leading cause of accidental falls. Most offices are prone to be the scene of a mass shooting by an aggrieved customer or employee. Continuing with in home work featuring flexible hours seems like a no brainer to me.
Since folks are either too stupid or too selfish to get vaccinated, chances are we will all be in lockdown mode again due to the delta variant that is currently raging across the country. So, perhaps, the reopening issue will again, sadly, be moot.
I think there's a general consensus that people need to go back to the office.
It's just too bad that SSA's current management decided to attempt to eviscerate the unions under the previous administration, because now the unions are not inclined to help make that happen easily and quickly with manafement assurances of employee protection. There also hasn't been a realization among management that things went way too far under Saul, and that the union has its uses, even for management. There's no trust there, and it's going to be difficult to rebuild that trust.
@ 4:17 "Most offices are prone to be the scene of a mass shooting..." Excuse me ???
Eh, do they though? Timeliness and accuracy standards, yes. But if I want to take 3 hour Disability applications and 1.5 hour RSI applications, what’s to stop me?
Telework or in-person. The main problem is the SSA is underfunded. You posted a blog previously about how there were actually more SSA employees in the 1960s an 1970s with a much smaller population.
The increasing backlog at the DDS level and OHO levels is an embarrassment. Just hire more employees and ALJs to whittle it down. Somebody does not want it to run efficiently.
4:17 I hope you are not serious. Really?
When you set an artificial barrier to access customer service such as "owns a computer or phone", it sure is funny how the claims involving the poorest and poorest educated seem to drop off, huh?
I understood the need for our FOs to close. They need to re-open in some responsible manner right away. Some aspects of our customer service held steady during work from home, a few actually even improved. And some plummeted or disappeared entirely. Social Security doesn't work as a program without in-person access to its employees.
Charles, I can understand your not publishing comments which are abrasive or insulting towards others.
However I think you should publish all comments which meet standards of good taste and decency.
Please do not censor comments which do not agree with your point of view (namely that SSA offices should reopen). And please do not post only the comments which do agree with your feelings about the FO reopening.
This could cause readers to have the false impression that everyone who reads your postings feels one way.
As an OHO writer, I'm fine returning to the office but I do wish to correct a misstatement in the initial post. There has been no "productivity decline" at OHO during the time we have been on full telework. We have been held to the same production standards (Decision Writer Productivity Index) we were held to before. What we have is a lack of work. We literally have no decisions to write as of this week, and that is with having taken on additional duties over the last year in the form of COVID Enhanced Outreach calls to non-rep'd claimants. Receipts have simply been down so much that the ALJs are not able to hold as many hearings as they were previously, which means there aren't enough decisions for us to write, which means, of course, that fewer decisions are being issued. That is beyond our control and has nothing to do with the "productivity" of anyone in OHO or anything to do with telework itself.
@6:25 If there is so little work to be done at hearing offices, why haven't there been commensurate layoffs of management folks, ALJ's, support staff, and writers then?
“The increasing backlog at the DDS level and OHO levels is an embarrassment.”
What backlogs at OHO? Sure, the current pending is partially reflective of the DDS backlog and fewer applications, but the pending at OHO has dropped from over 1.1 million to under 400k in the last 3-4 years. It was being decimated prior to offices closing down, too. I’d be curious to know how much of the current pending consists of folks requiring phone hearings and people who have fallen off the face of the earth and cannot be scheduled until offices reopen to ultimately have their cases dismissed.
There are roughly 1,200 to 1,300 judges, right? That’s roughly 250-300 cases per ALJ pending. Not even enough to have full dockets scheduled through the end of the year. The majority of ALJs are getting 50-75% of their scheduled dockets filled. The last thing OHO needs is more ALJs who can’t get 30 hearings a month scheduled due to a dearth of cases. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty sweet gig to only do 30 hearings a mo th, but it’s not a real efficient use of tax payer money.
@7:03, It's a real fear a lot of us have right now, of course, but I doubt they will do lay-offs. They haven't hired new writers (at least not as far as I know, certainly not for my office) for several years, and we are down by about half what we had 3 years ago through natural attrition. My guess is that they don't want to do lay-offs because the workload will naturally increase again once all the COVID benefits expire and people start applying for disability again. We have had a number of claimants that withdrew their hearing requests in the past 3-4 months because of all the other federal benefits they've been getting right now. Mostly chronic filers. Assuming things like stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment, and mortgage/rent freezes don't keep getting extended or having additional packages rammed through, I expect our workload to increase dramatically again in the next year or two (once cases make their way through the initial levels).
@625 It is a policy decision not to have layoffs because laying off a significant portion of SSA staff could actually affect the national economy. In addition, the flood gates will open eventually and those people let go will have moved on. Part of the problem is that many reps are holding out for in person hearings and this creates a reduced docket problem. You can't have it both ways. If you are holding out for in person hearings, you can't complain about the so called backlog. I understand why you want in person hearings but you are only making things worse. I tried to post this before but got censored. Let's see what happens this time.
@7:03 It still does not make sense to have such numbers of management folks, writers, support staff, and ALJ's if pending claims are way down. Even if applications go up in the next year or two it would likely take quite a while for those cases to get to OHO. So, it does not appear as though layoffs necessarily would not or should not become a factor. It seems strange to keep paying ALJ's and others their salaries when there is not enough work to fill a day.
You are seriously suggesting laying off a huge number of federal employees in the middle of a pandemic when the federal government has been giving ppp loans to private businesses so they could retain their workers even when they were shut down? That’s rich....
@11:33 I think layoffs would only be considered IF the pending claims were demonstrably low.
7:48pm: "Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty sweet gig to only do 30 hearings a month, but it’s not a real efficient use of tax payer money." Let's not forget that 30 hearings per month was normal until just a few years ago when the agency arbitrarily bumped the quota to 50 hearings per month. Yes, there was a large backlog at that time due to the great recession, but ALJs and staff worked down the backlog, and we're back to scheduling about the same number of hearings per ALJ as before the great recession.
So let's not pretend there's not enough work to go around. Granted, the workload is not the same as the last few years, but it's not that far off if one looks at a longer timeline.
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