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| Photo taken at 5:51 AM |
From Spectrum News:
The long lines outside Orlando's Social Security office have continued early Wednesday morning.
Dozens of Central Florida residents in search of Social Security services waited hours outside the Orlando Social Security office under the hot Florida sun Tuesday afternoon.
Some arrived as early as 2:00 a.m. Wednesday to try to guarantee an appointment this morning. The office opens at 9 a.m. ...
In a statement, a Social Security Administration spokesperson advised residents to book appointments over the phone or online to avoid waiting in lines.
However, people who waited in line told Spectrum News 13 that they tried, but were not able to book an appointment using those services.
Totally unacceptable. All of it, from being there at 2AM, to the appointment systems not working. This is NOT the way the US should work. Do I have a solution... unfortunately not. I'm not a government agency that is SUPPOSED to serve the public.
ReplyDeleteAny other business, any other agency in the government, anything else in the national economy having scenes like this? NO. Disgusting.
ReplyDeleteName one business or other agency that deals with everyone, from birth to death.
DeleteLining up at 2 am is just stupid.
ReplyDeleteThird world service at its best. We should be ashamed of ourselves. That spokesperson needs to be reassigned. Our phone services are overloaded and they very well know it. If this Agency believes phone appointments are part of the solution then they need to focus on fixing that problem.
ReplyDeleteIt's becoming more and more apparent that the ACOSS and her staff are not cut out for their jobs. There is no leadership from the 9th floor whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteWhile the agency burns around them, all they are interested in is SSI outreach and "equity." We are wasting tens of millions of dollars on this nonsense instead of getting the agency back to smooth and normal operations.
The first FO I worked at in Chicago--and I worked at and visited dozens--in the late 1980's had a line out the door prior to opening almost every day. Much longer lines especially early in the month and early in the week. Regularly the line would be out the door all day. One of the managers would at times come out in early afternoon with a bullhorn to tell people lined up down the sidewalk to go home as we would not be able to see them prior to closing time. This has long been common in big urban offices, like Orlando. Not a new problem and not easy to solve due to supply and demand which has not changed much.
ReplyDeleteThis line is at the card center. You can’t make appointments for a new or replacement card. Hold on to your cards folks.
ReplyDelete2:05 they are not dealing with everyone, know how we know? Look at the picture. Obviously not being delt with are they?
ReplyDelete1:11 is right, I have similar memories of Chicago area offices in the late 70s and early 80s. And we were "fully staffed".
ReplyDeleteAgree with lack of 9th floor leadership -and problem starts with the Biden Adminstration's neglect of SSA from the get go.
ReplyDeleteSSA has been under CRs for mnay years now.. Blaming"lack of funding" is a weak excuse.
They offered early outs last year and then offered early outs this year again. Lots of experienced people took them up on the offer and have left. The SSA is really trying to do more with less.
ReplyDeleteSupply and demand is unreasonable. SSA news funding and hiring, outstanding scholars hires. Competitive hiring is greatly needed! You can’t expect 10 people to be able to service 500 people a day as the complex issues SSA deals with takes time. No other agency provides the public service from birth to death.
ReplyDelete@10:36 Even when competitive hiring is used, we don't get much of a list if you are in a non-metropolitan area. We aren't quite rural, but we definitely aren't big city. I have used USAJOBS Pathways (recent college graduates) and DEU authorities. For the DEU, I didn't get anyone on the list that was willing to move to our area for the job, even though they applied for our location. Using pathways, I has one local person on the list, with the others out of state. And again, none of the out of state applicants wanted to move. Going back to FCIP type hiring is the best way to get attractive candidates. Unfortunately too many hiring managers neglected veterans so they wouldn't have to automatically select them.
ReplyDeleteSSA has a lot of problems, but our hiring authorities has to be at the top of the list.
Every time you see a story about long lines, just remember how many people said “start the pool.” Guess what, it happened. Lines were not like this pre-Covid, and staffing wasn’t nearly as bad either. Regardless of staff, there are only so many windows at each office at a time. Before I got out of the field years ago, we had 18 FEIs in my office. But when you saw over a 1000 people on average per week, there is a finite amount of people who can be served and we always had lines. What we needed was another office in our district, but thanks to the budget, our contact station and rural office were closed. People quit and retired, offices close, more people in general are retiring or refinancing or disabled than ever before and people need things that should be automated from SSA. . Until the commissioner focuses on service and morale over all the other issues, SSA is going to continue to struggle badly.
ReplyDeleteI can make an appointment with my doctor online. I can even book an appointment with DMV online. But, I cannot make an appointment with Social Security that way. Why not? The comment that the Executive level of SSA is out of their depth is dead on. A system that claims to answer just over 50% of calls at all, and most of them after holds of fifteen minutes ,and goes a month with essentially no phone system at all is completely unacceptable. The Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Grace Kim, should be out of her job. The IT staff needs to be reassigned and competent people brought in. And if the ACOSS is only interested in Equity and not doing the basic job of competent administration, then she should be removed too. Equity that amounts to failing service for all is not the equity we need.
ReplyDelete@1117 One reason that there are no online appointments is that people would make appointments for things that don't lend themselves to being done in a particular time slot. There are some like replacement or new SSNs that would be okay but if someone makes an appointment for an overpayment that could take a few minutes to an hour or longer. Unfortunately the phones are not being answered timely so employees can screen the calls and put appointments in time appropriate slots. For the most part, filing for retirement or survivors benefits can be done in 30-45 minutes and disability claims in an hour or a bit more.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, claimants occasionally misrepresent why they are contacting SSA in order to get say an appointment to file retirement when they just want an estimate, thereby pushing the calendar back further for those that are really filing for retirement.
Recently, and I am not sure if it is still the case, if someone was filing for benefits online and there was a specific problem (not sure what that is though) they were offered an appointment with the office. That's good for them but these appointments were random in how often they popped up and there was no one assigned to them. Someone had to be pulled from other duties to take care of these appointments.
Time to outsource, it is abundantly clear that the agency is broken.
ReplyDeleteIf you think you cant outsource because of the "complexity" of SSA you are wrong, because the people on the blog are saying the training is bad and the new hires are trash, so outsourcing it could be done with proper training. Time to break this up into mangle pieces and return proper service to the people that fund the agency.
What will actually happen? Nothing. Nothing will change, no new hires, no proper training, not a thing will be different. Why? because nothing ever changes with this agency, thats why it runs on last centuries systems and employees.
Agree, outsource to the lowest contract bidder and save money.
DeleteCouldn’t get any worse than it already is.
I agree that lines and waiting is a problem, but the reason this doesn’t get more attention and resources is because the vast majority of the work at SSA is completed timely. There is more to the agency than filing an initial claim and replacing ssn cards. Each month, RZs, CDR, earnings processing, millions of checks issued a month, Medicare payments processed, tax data loaded, millions of pieces of mail, literally hundreds of millions of data matched and wage reports etc, address changes, citizenship matches, death records, etc all get handled. And if you divert resources from those functions there will actually be issues to deal with, like money missing from the national economy, people losing their homes, Medicare stops getting paid, etc. . Lines suck, but millions of Americans each month handle their business or get their checks with no issue, without waiting, etc. I even replaced my SSN card online last month in less than 5 minutes. People waiting in line sucks, but it’s a tiny fraction of the overall agency business that is delayed, and sometimes the smallest group maybe seem the loudest, and it distracts from everyone else. Just keep that in mind.
ReplyDelete@1:32:
ReplyDeleteYes it can.
America is a third-world country (except for Boston).
2:11 so the automated already done stuff gets done, but the stuff with actual people doing it doesnt, thanks for pointing out the actual fact that only the people part is broken not the the Planet of the Apes computer system.
ReplyDeleteI would give SSA credit for generally handling the retirement side well and they do get lots and lots of checks out. The problem area there is customer service in general and when there is a screwup it can be very difficult to fix. On the other hand, the disability determination process is a complete disaster. I don't think anyone can seriously defend that part of the agency, at least not with a straight face.
ReplyDelete@2:11 So just curious, RZs are automated? CDRs are automated? Mail processing is automated? Wage reports are automated? Tax diary resolutions are automated? Address changes are automated? Maintaining the IT infrastructure is automated? Just curious when that change happened. The issue is, it’s only a very small minority of people who interact with SSA on a regular basis, and your voices aren’t collectively big enough to matter to your members of congress, SSA leadership, or local managers because in the bigger scope of things, speeding up waiting in line is quite insignificant compared to everything else the agency has to handle with its current fiscal limitations and physical footprint. You pay for service at Disney World, doesn’t mean you won’t have to wait in line to access that service.
ReplyDeleteTL:DR As bluntly as this sounds, nobody cares we have to wait in line because there are more important things to do than make sure you get seen in 20 minutes in the current operational constraints.
Automated? At SSA? It’s an extremely laborious process to the extent that it’s unexplainable.
DeleteThe real issues with SSA are complex. They did not staff or fund for baby boomers. They have not updated their policies which are complicated and difficult for the average claims specialist to understand. Employees in the Field Offices are undertrained. COVID required employees to work from home and SSA did not have a real plan for employees to work from home. Programs have become so complex that employees are retiring at the first possible opportunity. SSA headquarters failed to document SSA components and functions and failed to to require components to communicate with each other. Did you know that the primary systems used for SSDI and SSI benefits are still old mainframe systems..SSA has tried but been unable to integrate and update them into web based systems. It is really a miracle that any claim gets processed.
DeleteOutsourcing would mean the boss at the top (a political crony of whoever was in power at the time) would be paid handsomely and those who do the actual work would be underpaid and undertrained (hopelessly lost/inefficient). I was a Claims Representative in field offices for more than 8 years, and it took years to learn how to do the work. SSA has so many complicated provisions that it can't just be turned over to an outside company and be processed efficiently. Folks who must come into SSA offices generally have problem cases which can't be handled in 5 minutes. It takes expertise from years of experience to correct mistakes and to process complicated situations. That won't be found in an outsourced contract, which by its very nature would have to be renewable from year to year (or after a few years), with resultant turnover of staff. And don't forget what John Glenn reportedly said when he was in the space capsule, ready for blast off: he was thinking about how the government always takes the lowest bid. Outsourcing would mean SSA would be administered by the lowest bidder, a recipe for disaster.
ReplyDelete7:33 I did the job too, it wasnt rocket surgery and mostly it is done by people that have majored in minor things. Get over it, it is archaic, counterintuitive, bulky, poorly written and downright stupid, but it isnt impossible to learn or be taught properly.
ReplyDeleteBut 7:33, isn't what we have now a disaster?
ReplyDelete