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| de Juliis |
Ralph de Juliis, the head of the union that represents most Social Security employees, has written a piece for Federal News Network on the subject of the service that his union members are giving the public. To understand this piece, you must know that de Juliis is highly focused on keeping his members working from home for as long as possible, ideally for ever. Thus, even though he acknowledges that there are problems, he claims that telephone service has gotten better during the pandemic. I don't know how he can say that with a straight face. He also tells us that Social Security should reorganize its operations so union members don't have to come back to their offices. Somebody, anybody other than his union members, should be helping claimants with their sensitive documents. He doesn't address the manifold other service delivery problems at Social Security. He could make a claim that bringing employees back to their offices wouldn't help so much with all these other problems -- and he might be at least partially right -- but he doesn't even address the massive backlogs that Social Security has in every part of its operations apart from holding hearings and issuing ALJ decisions.
The argument for getting agency employees back in their offices is fairly simple. Service took a nosedive once the pandemic hit and employees started working from home. Wouldn't getting these employees back to their offices as soon as possible help? You can say that the sharp decline in service has a lot to do with the agency's poor appropriations but claiming that none of the decline in service has to do with work from home?
In any case, Social Security employees will soon start heading back to their offices at least part of the time. Let's hope that helps because things are in bad, bad shape.
24 comments:
Charles thanks for posting this. I do think though that your assessment of the article is really falling prey to scope creep. The Union president is basically advocating for third party verification of documents and his point that when employees come back to reduce the mail backlog is going to slow everything down temporarily. But I don’t think you should fault him for not addressing other SSA issues because he is advocating for a singular issue in this article and he’s right. Third party verification would be fantastic.
You aren’t wrong they want to keep their Union employees home for as long as possible but I thing you appropriated that argument from this article when it isn’t there.
Potential SSA legal and policy restrictions aside, the agency can't implement 3rd party verifications if the capability doesn't already exist. Thus to do so, requires obtaining a vendor to create such a verification for a particular document and negotiating with the owners of that document (state, local jurisdictions) to digitially verify them. This takes years - for each type of document! SSA started verifying drivers license data electronically through AAMVA in 2015 and still does not have a nationwide rollout because the few remaining states do not have the techical or funding capability, or have legal restrictions preventing them from participating. SSA stood up the techincal capability to perform video interviews for no change SSN cards in October 2020 and it was pulled back in order to negotiate this service delivery capability with AFGE. Mr. de Juliis is part of the problem, not the solution.
Seems to me the article has less to do with telework and more to do with SSA needing to update it's antiquated systems and rules to meet more modern times.
This is relevant with or without telework as an issue. In the long run, if the pandemic forces SSA to update its systems and processes, that's a win for everyone involved.
However, I have little faith in the agency or it's leaders to make any meaningful changes.
BTW...this is 11:15...in no way do I support the union nor defend the crap they pull...was merely pointing out the elephant in the room that SSA causes undue hardships with its ancient systems and policies.
"To understand this piece, you must know that DeJuliis is highly focused on keeping his members working from home for as long as possible, ideally forever".
That's nowhere in the article. In fact, the two of you seem to agree on many key points regarding SSA management inefficiency and commitment to antiquated work processes.
Charles, your attempt at employing Occam's Razor or maybe just general deduction is flawed. Yes, it is true that immediately after everyone went home to telework FT service started plummeting. But that wasn't the only thing that happened!
Workloads changed dramatically! SSA writ large starting getting massive increases in some lines of work (e.g., phone calls) while admittedly experiencing some significant declines in others. Even if the "net" effect on "total work" was zero or even negative (!!!!), it's not nothing to up and change your organization to suddenly handle (I'm thinking more assignment/allocation, obviously the employees simply doing tasks they've already done is no problem by itself) such different workloads basically overnight.
Additionally, while lots of teleworking plans/infrastructure/etc. were already in place, the machinery for everyone teleworking full-time certainly wasn't in place and its lack of existence, at least for the first little while of COVID, contributed GREATLY (SSA is still suffering because there are a good number of things it could do remotely but hasn't devised a way to allow that to happen). And these are just some of the other lurking variables missing in your analysis.
Basically what I'm saying is, it is the MOST facile and thus likely shoddy and inaccurate analysis of the situation to deduce: "FT telework starts, service goes down. QED, getting rid of FT telework fixes everything."
The solution to the mail processing nightmare proposed in this letter sounds like it could be good idea. But as 11:11 stated, this would take many months, if not years to implement. So it does nothing to solve the service issues in the short term. I do agree with the general sentiment of the letter that in 2022 SSA should not go back to the way things used be pre-pandemic. Too much time is spent on processing mail manually, and many of the documents are not processed consistently. Almost seems like luck of the draw in what worker processes our attorney forms. I am all for IT improvements that mitigate human error in mail processing.
What your all missing is that this has been a known issue on every level for decades and yet nothing has been done to address it. Literally no major system updates, just some small shiny ones. Basic Federal govt attitude of it being to broken to be fixed due to misc reasons. Don't rock the boat or question authority, keep your head down while waiting for that pension.
Good take Charles. The SSA and our firm are going to meet soon with some PR person from the SSA to discuss ways to improve.
Our firm already got them to eliminate the need for wet signatures on 1696. That has sped up the process.
As stated before, they need to eliminate a lot of stuff to get things rolling -
1. The nonsensical reconsideration phase
2. The fee cap of $6000 to encourage more reps
3. The nonsensical 5-day rule implemented 1 month after Covid hit.
And other issues.
This would help. I have little hope for the SSA but there is some hope.
I've had to call them twice since the pandemic started, I was helped on the phone MUCH faster than before, however, the agent had to keep messaging her boss (work from home, I guess). I have not experienced the horrible phone service. I do not know why that is? Mind you, two calls in 2 years is not a lot, but I waited no more than 5-10 minutes both times. I DO know, I needed someone from MY state for a state specific program that involves SSA, but got someone not here. She was helpful though, and she learned a thing or two herself! That being said, the degradation of the phone systems has been an ongoing issue for YEARS. I still won't call the 800 number, I always call the local office. I'll wait as long as needed, as they don't mess anything up! (800 number is the WORST).
I've had sad experiences with the 800 number these past months. From later acknowledged wrong information then "we'll get that to you in the mail" and what comes is so completely not what was requested. How quickly a call is answered if the outcome isn't a satisfied customer isn't a good thing. Answering faster but wrong or bad service isn't a plus. Sad thing is that instead of a short in person visit getting what I need, (can't, offices closed) it's now gone to the write your congressman stage. I need what I need, SSA doesn't handle it online using the phone has struck out multiple times. I've wasted I don't know how many minutes of my and the SSA employees and now congressperson and staff time over something pre-pandemic would have taken me less than an hour, including travel time. So the union and management can massage their numbers as they are wont to but neither has anything to be proud of.
I call field offices sometimes myself and know other people who do it far more often (it's their job, or a big part of it). Increasingly, what I experience and what I'm hearing from others is that after some amount of hold time, the call is "answered" in that it is recorded as being answered, but it's really picked up and put right back down--either hung up, or just placed on a desk or something (it's possible to hear the background noise). If field office staff are judged on average speed of answer and not on actually resolving problems, it's easy to understand why staff would do this...but it doesn't actually help the callers, and it is tremendously frustrating. What can be done about this?
What can be done? Easy...hire sufficient staffing and give the agency 2-3 years to get them up to speed. Then hope they don't quit before they become helpful. Easy. Next question please.
@9:48pm Hiring is happening. Over 1200 FO employees have been hired since October. But that’s not going to help anything for at least a year, considering how long trains my takes and how long it takes to actually become good at the job.
"The argument for getting agency employees back in their offices is fairly simple. Service took a nosedive once the pandemic hit and employees started working from home. Wouldn't getting these employees back to their offices as soon as possible help?"
Short answer: No.
There were severe cuts in SSA overtime which started in 2020 and continue through the present date. SSA has relied on heavy Operations employee overtime for decades to keep up with caseloads.
The worst OT cuts started shortly after employees were sent home to telework. It is impossible to keep up with the workload without OT, whether SSA employees are working from home or in the office.
During the last two years, SSA employees have become quite efficient working from home. Also there is much less leave usage, when employees are teleworking. I believe that forcing employees back to the office to do the same things they are doing from home will not help SSA service at all, and may even hurt it.
Finally I would like to say that many SSA employees took severe cuts. in their take-home pay when overtime was cut. It would be wrong and unfair to use the overtime cuts, and the resulting increase in backlogs, as justification to end telework.
Correct 10:39pm...that's why I followed that with wait 2-3 years till they become helpful and finally...hope they don't quit.
The last part is really important because my office has had 3 new hires quit recently. 2 within a year of being a CS and another before they even got out of training.
So yes, the agency is hiring...but are they staying?
Third party is coming. WFH lends itself to outsourcing. Its a double edged sword' and the whole "they are not trained" thing doesn't fly, neither were you when you started, if you can learn so can others.
Correct, 9:41am, but when I started, my office had 22 trained employees and I was the one new guy. Today, same office, we have 4 trained and 2 trainees and a temporary hire who, ready for this, gets no training.
So you can say suck it up if you want and that's fine with me. I'm good and certainly know what I'm doing after 20 years. But what about the person calling that gets the temp trying to answer their question or the trainee that can't either? The public doesn't deserve that...I'm sure we can both agree.
As far as outsourcing...go for it. I'm on board with that if the overall service we provide the public increases. I'll gladly retire if not needed.
9:41 It takes months in training class and years on the job for Claims Specialists in PSC and FO to become proficient at the job. Extremely complex regulations and workers' compensation laws and processing procedures must be learned. Cannot be outsourced.
So many of you guys cry about service being bad and the backlogs for various things, then cry about people pointing out how much time/effort it takes to make a person into a competent-enough CR/CS/TE/BA/whatever and some say outsourcing is the answer?
How do you think your intricate, nuanced claims will be handled by somebody making about half the paltry pay of current SSA staff in similar positions working for an employer who is trying to eek out as much profit off that contract as possible while barely meeting whatever deliverable benchmarks are established for that contract, which (spoiler alert) are going to be mostly time/total output related with minimal speaking to quality? You think those vendors wouldn't experience significant churn and have just as many--if not more--poorly trained employees?
Sure, some contractor support could make sense for the few rote processes SSA has (things with mail, for example). But it sounds like y'all want them jumping in and doing actual subject-matter related tasks. Unless SSA was going to couple this contract with some more massive requirements allowing the vendors to update all the systems, etc., such that they create some sort of Very-Easy-To-Use platform making the job significantly easier to learn, there's no way a vendor's employees are going to do better navigating all that hard to use/learn stuff than a federal employee. Y'all are delusional.
More money, more bodies. Then time. Since SSA is in such a bad way currently, it's going to need a whole lot of money/bodies up front and a good couple years with fat budgets to allow it to actually let new employees get some amount of competence before throwing them to the wolves that are the Operations CR/CS/TE/BA/etc. performance metric expectations.
Keep dancing around it all you want. The problem is clear and long-standing--SSA's budget has shrunk (when considering inflation) over the last couple/few decades and there's only more work for SSA to do and in the interim there just haven't been that many technological magic advancements that have by themselves increased productivity a ton to make up for that shortcoming.
Be mad at Congresses and the Presidents who have simply not advocated for larger budgets for SSA (for anything aside from stupid, fraud-seeking new outfits and I guess a couple times responding to the absurd 1.1x million pending OHO situation a few years back). This agency has 20k or more fewer employees than it had a couple decades ago and yet there is tons more work to do. 20k represents about 25% of the high water mark number of employees, and from this side 20k employees represents a nearly 1/3 increase in ranks. The problem is that big--SSA is understaffed by a five-figure number of employees, easy. That 1,xxx employees hired in Operations over the last few months is cute, but I doubt whether it even significantly beat attrition. SSA needs to hire 1x,xxx to 2x,000 new people immediately. Period. If that doesn't happen, things are going to stay bad.
According to the stats put out by OPM, the actual numbers of employees for SSA at the end of 9/2021 (latest available are 59,808, down from 69,963 in 9/20/ https://www.fedscope.opm.gov/employment.asp
So, a substantial reduction but not 20,000 jobs.
Otherwise, the point is well taken. There are many fewer employees being pushed to do more every day. The technology that is supposed to magically solve the problem of lower staff is poorly designed and creates as many problems as it solves. For example, the Rube Goldberg process for inputing 1696 forms creates more work, not less, in needing to fix the mistakes. Poor design is a management issue, not to be placed on the employees trying to make it work.
Reps complain about the poor service because we are ones listening to clients crying because they are getting no payments, even after they are approved. Being unable to contact the District Offices, Payment Centers, and even hearing offices is beyond frustrating especially when you can't actually go to the office and bang on the door.
The problems existed before COVID but COVID exposed how bad it really is. 10 to 20,000 more employees would be nice but not happening any time soon, particularly with the labor market as it is now, let alone the training time and cost for those Employees. I don't have a solution. There may not be a solution. But the current management, not the Commissioner who mostly lives in another world and has never dealt with direct management issues in her life, but the long time management of Social Security that put us in this mess needs to be replaced
If Ralph de Juliis liked communicating things to his own dues-paying members half as much as he liked writing grandstanding articles so he can see his name in the press, well....actually, that'd probably be bad for him. Because he'd eventually have to fess up to how many L's he's been putting up there in the last few years.
De Julis stood against Saul's arbitrary decree to suddenly end SSA telework. I will always give Ralph credit for that.
things are in bad shape, but they SAY quality, but they MEAN quantity. but when you have all quantity in bad quality, that just begets more quantity. it's a quick downward spiral that no one is fixing. because quality is not possible to measure, only quantity. managers just care that the case is not on the list. they don't care HOW it's off the list. if you need more time to clear it they say "why are you taking so long", so as employees we just clear it incorrectly knowingly because that's what manager wants.
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