A group representing employees of the Social Security Administration’s office of inspector general is calling on lawmakers and President Biden to take action against the watchdog office’s leadership, saying the leaders have lost the confidence of their employees.
The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association’s promise to take its complaints directly to Capitol Hill and the White House follows a vote in which 98% of responding employees represented by the professional association said they no longer had faith in SSA Inspector General Gail Ennis. The inspector general has ignored employee complaints and defied efforts to engage with workers, the group said in a recent letter to Ennis. The association represents 90% of the IG’s agents.
Employee satisfaction has declined since Ennis took office in early 2019 and took a significant hit this summer when the IG told employees the agency had begun conducting surveys of employee computer logs and telephone records to ensure its largely remote workforce was engaging in work activities at the proper times. Ennis said the agency was weighing disciplinary actions for those employees who were allegedly slacking off during their telework hours.
After the law enforcement association raised concerns about those practices and other managerial decisions, asking Ennis to meet with labor representatives to discuss concerns, the IG responded directly to the workforce with a letter rejecting the group’s concerns.
FLEOA suggested the total number of OIG special agents—plain-clothed federal law enforcement personnel who conduct investigations—has dropped by 37% in the last 18 months, though Ennis said the overall office of investigations was down just 7% since the pandemic began. She also vowed to oversee a workforce increase in the coming months as the agency fills vacancies. ...
The IG’s office was ranked 382 out of 411 agency subcomponents on the Partnership for Public Service’s most recent best places to work rankings, which is compiled from the government’s annual Federal Employees Viewpoint Survey data. The office’s engagement score has fallen by 22% in the last two years.
Oct 15, 2021
Problems At OIG
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6 comments:
So, let me get this straight, part of the OIG staff's problem is that OIG itself was using shady tactics to spy on them? I wonder if the OIG staff investigating SSA matters has the same objection when they tail our clients or lie to them about a fictitious criminal investigation to trick them into talking about their illness.
I can see why there are problems with OIG employee morale, it's like the employees are being treated as though they cannot be trusted.
For the 99.9 percent of SSA employees who work hard from home,, it would be insulting for management to go behind our backs and study our computer logs.
Also this could be deceiving. Sometimes I am doing calculations or looking at POMS references on my own desktop computer, or looking up attorney fax numbers through a google search, on the desktop, while the SSA laptop is sitting idle. All related to SSA work.
If someone was looking to see if I were hitting computer keys on the SSA laptop well I wasn't, even though I was doing my job.
...it's incredibly ironic that OIG is complaining about being investigated. I disagree with the tactics generally (anyone in data science could tell you, it's incredibly ineffective to try and calculate productivity with "computer logs and telephone records,") but it's still amusing.
@11:30am But, that is how SSA operates not only at OIG but at hearing offices and field offices. It's sad.
Further 9:08 part of the inclination for utilizing a personal device is that the heavy firewalling and tracking we are subject to makes many useful tools like Google and the USPS lookup function hideously slow on our work devices. That said, the irony in this is thick. . .
@12:08
11:30 here. Ok that's bad too. Has anyone suggested tracking a results-oriented system, and then random screening of resolved issues?
I get its complicated, and the horror stories I've heard as to management of SSA itself doesn't give me a lot of hope. On a related note, I heard the deputy commissioner of office of systems got an award for IT solutions...starting to see why there is so much frustration.
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