From: ^Commissioner
Broadcast <Commissioner.Broadcast@ssa.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 1:51 PM
Subject: Moving Forward
A Message to All SSA Employees
Subject: Moving Forward
As I enter my second week as Acting Commissioner, I would like to share a bit about my goals, objectives, and for our path forward.
Right now, I am spending much of my time listening to and learning from agency experts. I am meeting with labor unions this week. I also want to hear from you, staff and managers alike. I am relying on you to help identify what we can improve, recommend solutions, and bring about change that helps us serve the public better. If you have an idea you would like to share with me, please send it to the ^Employee Ideas mailbox.
My goals and objectives for Social Security are straightforward, and they will drive my decisions every day.
- Everyone who is eligible for benefits under the programs we administer should receive them. It is up to all of us to identify and resolve any root causes of inequity in accessing our programs.
- We must treat our employees fairly and equitably. That means supporting you in the career paths that you choose and recognizing that your success is critical to the success of our organization.
I believe that when we observe or encounter disparities, we should first identify and address systemic barriers that contribute to these disparities before we assume there are deficits in the individuals, families, and communities we serve, or in colleagues with whom we serve.
As our country rebounds from a pandemic that has changed how we engage in our communities, the need for our services is tremendous, particularly for people facing barriers to our services. I know you are wondering about what we are planning for the government-wide transition back to the office and are particularly interested in telework. You may see in the media that yesterday most agencies finalized their plans for reentry. I take this effort seriously, and we have been given a little more time to finalize our plan so that I can ensure it is informed by our employees and stakeholders. Therefore, I will share more information soon. Let me assure you that we will overcome challenges together – thoughtfully and safely.
Thank you for your work every day to help the millions of people who depend on our services.
Kilolo Kijakazi
Acting Commissioner
29 comments:
Wow. "inequities" "disparities" "systemic barriers". The progressive mantra in full swing. Watch for the return of emphasis on what used to be called Metro Offices which qualified for greater staffing and had everyone trying to justify demographics to meet the standards, no matter how much sleight of hand was needed. Bodes well for offices in Democratic big cities...
Sounds pretty positive. Do not remember Saul ever producing a letter like this with much optimism. Hopefully the new commish can get some things done.
Wow, the new COSS sure triggered 10:55! How dare she point out the obvious!!!
Considering the amount of lost paperwork, docs sitting around for months before being processed and other instances of incompetence or just plain negligence, more telework is just what we need. A couple of times recently when staff have asked to talk to supervisors, the employee just hung up. Seems telework has made some of these employees feel entitled to just blow off anyone who needs assistance with something. Anyone who believes this telework is working is not dealing with the agency in the real world.
@10:55AM, you might want to check your privilege.
I disagree that telework is not working well. I am accomplishing more at home than I did in the office with all the distractions there and being tired from having to commute.
From what I gather the same is true for most SSA employees. More and better work is being done at home,
I adjudicate claims on my computer at home just as well as I could in the office. There is absolutely no reason to force me and other employees whose work can be done at home, to commute to an office to do exactly the same thing there.
In regard to the acting Commissioner's statement, I suspect Saul was being unreasonable in his plans for future telework, and those plans naturally had to be scrapped by the new commissioner Kijakazi. . She probably wants to work and coordinate with AFGE on this issue more than Saul did, which is a good thing.
There is an urgent need to know now whether in-person OHO hearings will resume, and if so, when. Video is better than telephone but vastly inferior to in-person hearings. On the other hand, maybe all of life should become stay at home telework and all human interaction limited to a video picture on a monitor.
Well, duh. That's where the people are.
"we have been given a little more time to finalize our plan so that I can ensure it is informed by our employees and stakeholders...Let me assure you that we will overcome challenges together, thoughtfully and safely".
It sounds like the prior reopening plans (formulated under Saul's regime at SSA) were not safe enough for employees or for the general public in SSA offices.
With the new variants and recent bad news about COVID19 cases, it is better for the new commissioner to be safe than sorry, and not to rush into reopening.
@4:27 Regarding your statement "With the new variants and recent bad news about COVID19 cases, it is better for the new commissioner to be safe than sorry, and not to rush into reopening", I could not agree more. The delta variant, unfortunately, is rampaging now. And, the longer folks wait to get vaccinated the greater the likelihood of even more variants, and perhaps more virulent variants, of COVID19. So, needless to say I like the words of the Acting Commissioner indicating that challenges will be overcome in a thoughtful and safe manner.
I like the language about addressing disparities and that every eligible claimant should receive benefits. Hopefully, this will translate into the Appeals Council looking more stringently at decisions from ALJ's that are known to deny almost everybody or who have a predisposition to denying all mental cases or people under a certain age.
If the work can be done from home, then it can be done elsewhere. Then it is time to start looking for ways to lower the cost and increase productivity. We need some studies to see how long it will take to train and set up third party vendors to handle some of the basic tasks cheaper and faster.
Cue the: it takes years to learn.
It does the way SSA teaches it. I did it, worked for the agency. It wasnt that hard. It is relentless, boring, but not hard.
Spoken like a former SR/CSR. Granted their job isn't "easy" but a contractor could certainly be trained on processing replacement cards and making POS inputs.
However, the idea that contractors could be given a few weeks (or even months) of training and be a proficient replacement for a claims specialist is laughable on its face. I am a bright guy and it took me three years to truly feel comfortable applying the millions of pages of POMS to various unique situations.
You know what else is laughable? The concept that contractors save the government money. They don't, its simply a variation of the old spoils system for political donors in the private sector.
Spoken like an entitled government employee that thinks what they do is beyond the scope of mere mortals.
I have watched reps become ALJs, I have watched paralegals become decision writers and I have watched former Dairy Queen shift managers become FO staff.
Tell me again how hard this rocket surgery is.
If you think things are bad now, bring on the unvetted, poorly trained, poorly treated contractors and see what you get. Hold on while I get my popcorn.
I forgot, every single day hard working agency staff spend hours pouring over ancient POMS text decoding the glyphs like the Language of the Birds. After such intense mind bending work, they must write a new computer program for every single action, create a new computer to run it on and then create an electrical grid to run it all.
In reality, thousands and thousands of the exact same thing get done every day. The exact same actions again and again and again and again and again. Occassionally something unusual crops up, takes a bit of research and some special inputs, but mostly it is the same thing every single day.
If it was half as hard as it is made out to be nobody would ever be paid, get a card, change and address or millions of other actions that happen EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Get over it.
I would be happy to volunteer to hold in person hearings. I understand the AALJ playing their hand while they have clout, but I'm more effective in office as a judge. Work at home isn't some panacea and it's not for everyone.
Example:
Weeek 7 now. Tried to set up a MySSA account. Verification failed, and was not able to get the account started and the system locked us out.
Called SSA 800 number, need an appt to file for Medicare only application.
They were unable to provide a appointment over the phone. Said they sent it to the FO and they would call within 5 days. No call in 5 days.
Called the FO, they said they have no open appt that they can schedule.
Called back to the 800 number and explained.
Call from FO, we cant schedule file a paper application and fax it.
Week 7 still no Medicare, FO said no fax, we faxed 3 times, showing fax sent messages on our end. At the end of the month work coverage stops because she is Medicare age.
System is working perfectly isnt it. Could have had the person go in person, sit a few hours, file the 15 minute application and been done.
Not hurting anyone, it is all fine, then hey why dont you take care of this lady's healthcare bills and prescriptions until this is all done.
Not isoloated, we have 3 others in similar situations, 2 medicare only and one filing RIB.
Bingo! 10:05 AM here. Again, I am still waiting to hear a compelling arguement from the right wing trolls advocating for contractors replacing claims specialists.
How would that:
A. Save the government money? Contractors are paid far higher salaries than their civil service counterparts, more than negating the savings from not providing them benefits.
2. Improve service to the public?
I guarantee you never were employed by SSA as a Claims Specialist or Claims Technical Expert. You sound like a rep who thinks he/she knows what is involved with those jobs, but actually has no clue.
I guess people desperately want lots of contractors who have little to no job knowledge processing work, as long as someone picks up the phone all the time, ehh? . SSA is badly staffed, this is a result of decades of underfunding and understaffing. Hiring throwaway employees like at Amazon will not work to improve customer service. The folks who post on this forum seem to treat SSA employees with hostility and elitism. Its as if the employees at SSA are losers, dummies and garbage, and they dont care. The presumption is false. Most SSA employees try very hard to help. They care and help, after all the nonsense from management to hit unrealistic production #s which have nothing to do with providing customer service, such as CDRS.
I just want you folks to understand SSA is allocated $$ and goals to process workloads which have nothing to do with processing claims. Nothing to do with Intake of claims, paying benefits and answering the phones. Agency staff have less time to help people because a big priority of the agency is ensuring the right people are being paid. Which means reviewing disability and income and resources many times for claimants on SSI. And after those top priorities are addressed, the agency has to try its best to serve the public.
Hiring contractors wont fix anything when the funding is geared towards integrity vs helping the public. Simply blaming telework is missing the picture.
@10:15. From what I've seen, A. is not true. Typically its the other way around so, it probably would save money.
And as for 2 - couldn't get much worse. If the contractor were held to performance standards in the contract, very likely could improve public service,
Seems to have hit a nerve.
Also guess they are checking this blog while working from home :)
It would be nice to get a little appreciation for the difficult work that we do at SSA.
Rather than posters making up fake resumes about how they used to work at SSA and how easy their jobs were.
So many sparky comments, so many good points.
1258 you have the best point of why there needs to be some type of reopening but it does not have to be a wholesale reopening
For the ALJ who wants to have in person hearings, you should be able to but expect to be doing it mostly all by yourself unless there are volunteers who will come in despite the rising dangers. No guard service either but they were contractors so who knows.
As for the pro-contractor chorus, you are right that the employees of government contractors don't earn as much as federal employees. However, the actual contractors who provide those contract employees are cost plus and they don't save Uncle Sam any money at all.
As for the debate over how complicated our programs are, anyone who minimizes the complexity never worked for SSA or it is one of those managers who has no institutional knowledge.
Good luck to all of us, especially the claimants because we are all in a hand basket and I am pretty sure we are going to hell.
I'm a beneficiary and would like thank the kind,helpful and hard working SSA employees excluding ALJS.
Thank you.
@1258 One does not need a mySSA account to file an online claim for RIB, Medicare or DIB. The internet unit in my office gets those daily. We are required to contact the claimant and verify information with them but it only holds up the claim for that contact to take place. It's in an EM from about Sept 2018.
@1208 PM If people aren't answering calls now or are answering them and hanging up, how is that going to change when they return to the office. I agree it should not happen but not sure the location of the person giving no or lousy service matters at all.
LOL there are millions of flights a year, you ready to go take a bird up in the sky and land one in a few weeks of training?
The ubiquity of a task or activity doesn't necessarily imply it is easy, ha!
1:57 is exactly right…most of the online filings for my office are not done through a MySSA account and you absolutely do not need to create on to file an application through the agency website.
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