From the written testimony of Grace Kim, Deputy Commissioner Operations to the House Social Security Subcommittee:
... While we appreciate the increase over FY 2021, the FY 2022 appropriation of $13.3 billion is not sufficient. This budget limits our capacity to provide service to the millions of people who are applying for SSN cards; retirement, survivors, and disability benefits; and Supplemental Security Income benefits for people who are aged, blind, and disabled. Our funding has remained relatively flat for the previous four years, and appropriations for base administration have failed to cover our fixed costs over the past decade. For instance, the $411 million increase in FY 2022 does not fully pay for cost increases of approximately $550 million to cover employee pay raises, step increases, and Federal Employees Retirement System contributions. Of the $411 million increase we received, over 30 percent covered increased funding for our program integrity workloads, requiring us to prioritize stewardship over other essential workloads. We are also absorbing costs related to expanding in-person services, such as COVID-19 testing, facilities cleaning, more guards, and information technology (IT).
To fund these expenses and our fixed costs, we are delaying critically needed hires, reducing much needed overtime, and postponing select IT improvements. These delays in hiring and technology modernization, coupled with reduced overtime, are resulting in growing backlogs, which have reached unacceptable levels, and a deterioration in service. Less staff and delayed technological upgrades also mean we are not fully prepared to handle potential surges of people returning to our offices for in-person service.
Our employees are one of our greatest assets to help us address these unprecedented demands. We are facing our lowest staffing level in 25 years. This is driven by insufficient funding over multiple years to hire the level of staff needed, and higher than average attrition rates across the agency. Our funding level will constrain our ability to add the necessary staff to reduce the backlogs that have built up during the pandemic. It will also affect employee morale, which is already at a very low level, as demonstrated by the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and recent Pulse Surveys.
Because of the FY 2022 funding level, we were forced to implement a temporary hiring freeze, including all external Federal hires and DDS hires. In our front-line components such as Field Offices, Teleservice Centers, and Processing Centers, attrition is nearly 7 percent so far this fiscal year, or 2,900 losses. The highest rate is in our Teleservice Centers at over 12 percent to date. At this pace, we believe we will lose over 4,500 front-line operations employees this year, which is 1,000 more losses than we experienced before the pandemic. This would equate to an annualized attrition rate of 11 percent, or about 4 percentage points higher than our historical average.
In our State DDSs, where medical decisions are adjudicated, attrition is also unprecedented, at over 25 percent. These complex jobs require about two years of training. The loss of experienced examiners significantly affects the ability to train new employees and complete program integrity workloads, such as continuing disability reviews, which are generally performed by more experienced examiners due to their complexity. We are working with the States to understand the underlying reasons.
We are also severely limiting our use of overtime, which reduces our ability to compensate for staff losses. Reduced overtime in our Processing Centers is contributing to our current 4.5 million pending actions, which are up from 3.2 million at the end of 2018. We expect pending cases to surpass our 2016 record high of 4.6 million by the end of the fiscal year.
Additionally, the lack of overtime opportunities and the increasing workloads have resulted in low morale, with our employees reporting they feel overworked, overwhelmed, and exhausted.
We are at a crossroads. The cumulative impact will increase our customers’ wait times for in-person and phone service, increase claims processing times, and lead to increases in pending workloads. As we dig out from the effects of the pandemic, we must have sustained funding for the public to have continued confidence not just in our agency, but in government. We know people need our help, and Congress recognizes the importance of our local offices to communities. None of us think it is okay for applicants to wait six months for a decision on their disability application, but that is the level of service Congress and the public should expect absent sufficient resources. It will take a multi-year effort and adequate funding to restore pre-pandemic initial claim wait times. We hope we can work with you to resolve these funding challenges and restore the level of service the public requires. ...
I have no reason to believe it's coming but Social Security needs a special appropriation -- now!
21 comments:
This is the first mention I have heard of a FY 2022 hiring freeze.
Shouldn't unprecedented attrition REDUCE staffing expenses? How is it possible to have $550M in higher staffing costs with significantly less staffing? This doesn't pass the smell test.
Why is it that government agencies never seem to have enough money but they can always find it when they want to. How much is being spent on the new diversity initiatives? Wouldn't upgrading IT systems be a more appropriate use for that money?
@3:50 Attrition means people leave. They have to be replaced on way or another. Agencies replace them with trainee employees, who then, of course, have to be trained. This costs money, and a lot of it.
Anonymous 4:27 - Different funding buckets, I guarantee. In watching members of Congress ask "What laws and policies can Congress change to help?" I laughed my ass off. How about 3/4 of them. Congress is so far removed from actual work they have no idea that's not a question that can be answered in a 2 minute response. SSA is so constricted by red tape its impossible to progress and maintain any flexibility. I love how the agency that has the MOST impact on the everyday citizen has to beg to maintain funding levels that match inflation, but we can magic 40B out of nowhere for foreign affairs.
@427 Describe a diversity initiative you believe is being contemplated or implemented at SSA that costs a significant amount of money.
First time I am hearing of a 2022 hiring freeze. DCS has been authorizing ACs to hire over a 200 slots in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
Not a lot of money but sitting through diversity training is a waste for entire agency. Could be clearing claims. Hiring people to check a diversity block can be a waste of time and money if they can't do the job. It's not so much a huge waste as it is just a general waste when resources are taxed too much to get basics done.
The diversity training video is like 12 minutes
They should start by federalizing all Disability Determination Agencies. The disconnect is huge and dysfunctional to say the least. While this is a small chunk of our problems, it would be a good start in the improvement- keeping trained and highly functioning employees happy is the key to success. Why such a huge part of SSA is under a state government, is beyond me. There really is no explanation why Disability Determination Services is under a Department of Education agency.
The Superintendent of Department of Ed-who makes all our decisions has never even stepped foot into our building. It’s nonsense.
It seems to me that the agency could be much more efficient if a lot of tasks were centralized. You've got people in the field offices doing multiple things at once. It doesn't make any sense to have these people processing initial claims and paperwork. A centralized intake unit would make more sense. That is what the VA has. Having people specialize would also reduce errors. The field offices should have just enough people to handle people who need face to face services and phone calls. Of course, the union will never allow that, will they?
I have worked in PC7 Operations since 1980. The cuts in overtime I have seen the last two years are greater than at any other time since I have been in the agency.
Claims Specialists (CS) for example traditionally have had 15+ hours of overtime offered per week. This year except for a couple of Saturdays, zilch, zero, no overtime at all for CS.
CS process ALJ allowances, WC adjustments, and determine attorney fees. This work is now being backlogged.
Grace Kim sent out the EMail terminating telework for SSA Operations in late 2019, under Saul's regime.
At least she is no longer blaming teleworking employees for the SSA backlogs. I think she has learned over the last two years that SSA telework works well.
Priorities, people. It is more important to send $40 BILLION to continue a war in Ukraine, rather than work for a cease fire. Lower priority to find a lasting solutions to improve service at SSA. It wouldn't take nearly $40 billion to do that.
Grace Kim is an embarrassment. She has not operations management experience or capability. Her answers to questions about what exact plan does SS have to use the 2 Bilion in technical upgrades was "O'll get back to you on that"
My question for her would have been why the phone system crashed and why did it stay down for weeks.
Yes, they need more staff but the staff they have, particularly in upper management, needs replacement. Enough is enough
It is pretty clear that people posting on here aren’t just whining for the sake of it. DC Kim basically echoed the comments we’ve been seeing here for the last 4 months
Grace Kim is a disgrace to SSA. She is a career Office of General Counsel attorney that somehow was elevated to her current position. Unfortunately, she is surrounded by “Executives” that are too afraid to contradict her and have run a once strong organization into the ground. Her team shamelessly squanders hundreds of millions of dollars on failed technology, terrible training for new hires, and overspends on inferior and excessive unneeded space, etc. When experienced staff that cares about the public and staff offer low cost solutions, they are made to feel worthless for speaking up. There is no vision, no empathy, only fake ,self-serving leadership from home in their sweats. Yes, field office personnel has returned to the field, the “Executives” have been home since March 2020-shameful.
Great leadership again….the “executives” have been home since March 2020… convenient for them and what a great example they set for employees who have to return to the office. There was talk in OHO about leadership “leading” the way… geez, the chief judge, even held an in person hearing or maybe a few hearings. I think they forgot that the only people leading the way were the management teams in the offices that kept all of the “leaders” employed. Some have suggested moving the SESers around and there is merit to that, but it appears the Acting Commish is too clueless to recognize when a shuffling of the deck might eliminate some favoritism, inability to hold your long term buddy employees accountable for bad behavior and just plain bad decision-making. Leadership is lacking…
@8:36am. Watch the cost really go up if you federalize the DDSs. Salary and benefits are better than the state DDS sites.
Rather than federalize, SSA needs to get the state DDSs to compete against one another to drive cost down. Now that eDib and the electronic folder is well established across the national, workload can be shipped anywhere now. To a state governor it means more budget and more jobs. SSA would need to improve overall performance monitoring with DCPS. If a state improves performance and quality, than they could get additional workload. Also with remote work, examiners could exist anywhere working for other states. So even take the DCPS monitoring down to the resource level to ensure your top performers get additional work. Change the overall model to pay for performance/quality and even leverage contractors to perform the reviews. The capabilities are in place to do this now, but it will take willingness at the top. Certainly could be shown to benefit states that perform better.
To 8:36 State Agencies will never be Federalized. It was part of the original deal from the 50's engineered by then Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in order to get disability benefits passed. Various States were opposed, well New York mainly, becuase they already had a State Program for disability and numerous State employees administering the program. They, and as a result, their Senators and Reps at the time, did not want to lose those jobs.
Johnson brilliantly said they could keep the jobs, and more, by arranging for the system we have now with the State Agency at the initial and recon levels and all the jobs for the State to dole out as they choose. This got New York and a few others on board and disability managed to get adopted by a close vote.
Nothing in this dynamic has changed and any effort to take jobs from the States by getting rid of the State Agencies simply will not happen.
So separate it and let states that want to have a "state" level disability program have one. I don't think SSA would care at all. Please take some work and lessen the burden on the the trust funds.
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