Social Security's telephone systems have been down this week. It's been essentially impossible to call in. I don't get the impression that the agency is all that concerned about this. They haven't even put out a press release. Maybe by this point the difference between nearly impossible and impossible have become so slight that it hardly matters to them any more.
There's an employee union podcast on reopening at Social Security, specifically at the teleservice centers, which says that there are MAJOR technical problems with new telecommunications contractors which are significantly affecting agency telephone service. There's a fair amount of whining on the podcast that would appeal only to union members but mixed in is real info on the agency's telephone problems. Talk about strategies to make sure agency employees can work in their pajamas everyday, forever, isn't going to win the union many friends nor are many likely to buy into the notion that Covid will still be a dire public health threat by late this month when agency employees start returning -- part-time -- to their offices. However, my point in posting this is the information in the podcast about the serious technical problems.
Note that no matter how bad the contractor problems may be, Social Security lacks the manpower to answer its phones anyway!
Fish rot from the head down. The SES corps and agency leadership seem to be interested solely in career advancement these days, not customer service or administering the programs. SSA needs full time Senate confirmed leadership badly.
ReplyDeleteWhat does this have to do with the FO's? This is the TSC union fighting for 100% telework for TSC employees. That seems reasonable.
ReplyDeleteall units outside of the field office should have 100% telework and the field offices should have 3 days of telework a week.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIf someone is doing their job at home, it doesn't matter if they are wearing their pajamas, or even if they are nude.
Being on the telephones, nobody can see them, what difference does their attire make?
I have to agree with the comment Sonia Saldivar made: why are the teleservice employees being made to go in to the office , one day per week?
Like what she said, this is more trouble than it's worth. (Same holds for PSC employees)
Just give then 5 days per week telework, not 4, and everyone's happy.
It seems the only concern of SS employees is how much of their time can be at home working. For the people in field offices, you need to be there. The risks of COVID now with precautions are about as low as they are ever going to be. For the people in the payment centers, I wouldn' care where you are working if I could see evidence that you were working. Not being able to call payment centers, like ever, is an ongoing problem that predated Covid but has only gotten worse since. The last week was hard to tell that there was a difference since I have long since given up calling them.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem is poorly designed systems, a management failure, and inadequate staff, a political failure shared by both parties.
Social Security spends one quarter of Federal Revenues. If a real business worked this way, they would have clpsed their doors long ago.
All management at SS should be gone.
12:40 p m
ReplyDeleteThere are field offices, the N800#, the PC7 RCC, and many fax & to a lesser extent email points of contact.
It’s unfortunate you can’t see “evidence” we’re working in the PC’s, but incoming calls just gum up the system. PC’s shouldn’t have to take them unless they set up similar teams like the RCC in each one.
ReplyDelete5:16 I would agree that fax is a better method of communication with the PC than phone calls, as it sometimes takes time to research the issue.
However I wish attorneys would stop sending repeated fax to the PC. I often get cases where the same attorney sends an original fax, then multiple followup faxes on the same issue, usually failure to withhold attorney fee. So when I get the case I have to look through all the docs, on each fax the attorney sent, only to find they are identical. It's a waste of time and slows processing down.
The cases not going to get worked until the oldest Action Control Record gets old enough to be pulled from the backlog. Followup faxes are not going to make it be worked faster. One fax is enough.
I'm starting to keep a log on all my attempted calls to my local field office. After a year I'm going to send the results to my senator. It likely won't help but I'll feel better. One of my favorite ongoing glitches is when you finally get though to someone all you get is silence and neither side can hear the other. Fortunately there are some claim reps at my office that know this and can see the nunmber of the person calling and calls them right back.
ReplyDeleteIt’s unfortunate you can’t see “evidence” we’re working in the PC’s, but incoming calls just gum up the system. PC’s shouldn’t have to take them unless they set up similar teams like the RCC in each one.
ReplyDeleteso, why exactly can't each of the regional payment centers have a representative call number and staff to field calls just like Baltimore. And, maybe we would't keep sending faxes fwith the same information if we could tell that they were received and being worked. The can we see the file at the Hearing office but see nothing at the payment center to know that the case is being worked. Why at initial and recon can we only see the E and F sections of the electronic file and not the B secotion that shows the notices sent so we cannot if the the determination has been made. Why can we see the various iterations of the earnings record in the D section even at the Hearing Level right before the hearing and not before so we can resolve issues regarding earnings ahead of time. Why can we not directly see the earnings history at any point in the process.
And why, given teh abject failure of management to correct the phone issues, has no one been fired.
Just Asking.
Social security as an agency "spending" 1/4 of all Federal revenues is misleading. Yes, the Agency doles out 1/4 of revenue worth of payments; but those payments and the pot of money from which they come have zilch to do with SSA's administrative budget--the costs to run the agency.
ReplyDeleteTo run the Federal government program that handles 1/4 of all Federal revenues (over a trillion a year!), our Congress has seen fit to fund SSA at about $13 billion a year. I believe that's less than a quarter of last-minute, undebated, unasked for fractional increases to already massive defense spending Congress has given DoD a few times in the last few years.
They aren't serious about SSA and its benefits/beneficiaries until they start adding billions more to its administrative budget. Period.