From the Urban Institute:
Join the Urban Institute for a conversation with Kilolo Kijakazi, acting Social Security Administration (SSA) commissioner, and Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute. They will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing SSA. In 2023, SSA will administer benefits and payments for over 70 million people, and Social Security will cover about 181 million workers and their families.
Following the conversation with Kijakazi, an expert panel will discuss challenges facing Social Security retirement and disability programs. Researchers will present policy options that could promote equity and bolster the financial security of retirees, people with disabilities, and their families in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
You can attend this by Zoom. It's at 2:00 Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 11.
11 comments:
I’d like to hear why she is fostering and/or allowing her deputies to continue fostering an increasingly toxic work environment and taking no steps toward improving morale and retention. I really thought she would do better than Trump, Saul and Gruber. Instead, it’s been nothing but middle fingers and continued cries to “go faster! Faster! Faster!”
This will be nothing but hot air from the acting commissioner. SSA employees have been hearing it since she start. "We see you, we hear you," and we'll absolutely do nothing for you. SSA's operations staff has been slowly drowning in work while RO/HQ just sends out news letters, Christmas cards, and whatever other delusional things come to their minds. Never, not ONCE, have any of the management took a moment, stepped back, reflected on what operations employees are telling them/suggesting, and realized that THEY (management) are a HUGE part of the morale/retention problem at SSA. It's not going to get better and anyone with a brain should leave SSA for better pastures.
I honestly don't think she's aware just how bad it is. OC delegates 90% of stuff down to the DC level. The only thing they care about are meetings with the advocate community and a few equity based initiatives. That's why they're about to staff up an Office of Native American Partnerships, but can't manage to staff field offices adequately.
The DCs tell her it's all great, but we need more resources. Her mistake is continuing to trust Andrew Saul's senior management staff, which has been left unchanged and without any guidance to change how they operate.
SSA needs leadership that knows how to run a large organization.
Agreed 1:27. ‘More of the same’ re telework and new hires that take ages to be proficient does not help the rest of us that are doing the work of four people. I have Title 2 A-Z in my office in a major metro area. On top of that, I’m a generalist and have to do T16 stuff. On top of that I have to screen at least one day a week. I have heard nothing from my mgmt re the efforts to improve morale since the initiative was instituted. I thought we were supposed to be having meetings etc. Bottom line, a .001% or whatever increase in some of the workplace satisfaction scores is going to ‘prove’ she’s increased morale, per the benchmarks they created. Total joke.
The problem is the people dictating the rules in the agency have never done the work. You can’t begin to understand how unreasonable the workloads are if you have never worked in the field office or any Ssa office that directly deals with the public.
It cracks me up when people like 5:29 just assume that people at HQ and the RO don’t do work. Does your office have electricity and water? Do your laptops connect to the network? Did you get paid last week? Does your health insurance work? Do the queries you use have data in them from the exchanges? Do AM, EM, OBs come out with legislative and programmatic changes? Are White House initiatives addressed? Is SSA actively working with other agencies on joint initiatives? Do you have guards in your office? I get that it’s easy to act like HQ is out of touch, many people at HQ have never worked in the FO. But there are also a lot of jobs in the HQ that you can’t learn in the FO and those people deserve respect too. And then there are those of us who have started in the field and advocate for everything from an operations perspective. But until you leave the field you don’t have the perspective of all the other issues that go into the things you never knew even existed. Blame senior leadership in the four failing components that deserve it (OC, DCO, DCHR, OHO) but leave the rest of the agency who is happy and working hard out of it.
No one is immune to the criticism
7:15 you are right. I get the frustration. Everyone is looking for someone to blame, especially the operations and field office folks. But when you have spent your whole life in the field you have no idea what else it takes to run the agency and those employees are not nearly as miserable. Look at FEVS surveys and morale and engagement numbers. It’s the FO and operations that are mad. And like I said blame OC for not doing enough, DCO for the terrible new hire training and lack of resources, DCHR for that ridiculous realignment and making Janet Walker as Operations CHR person, lol. What a joke. And blame them for all the useless in-service reminders that never get updated and take hours. Blame OHO for the unhappy staff positions and hearing issues. But the rest of the agency isn’t complaining like this, is favorably rating their DCs and ACs and aren’t running for retirement or other agencies.
I worked with someone in the FO management who did a detail at HQ years ago. He couldn’t believe how many people sat around and did nothing all day.
Am I the only one that noticed in the video with the commish that the Biden Administration intends to have SSA administer a national paid family leave program in 2024? If we think service is bad now, just wait until we have to administer a new national program. The complete disconnect from the reslity of the staffing issue is mind boggling. Gee, lets solve our staffing problem by giving the agency more work.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?527265-1/challenges-facing-social-security-administration
oof, did anyone watch this? Acting Commissioner was thrown absolute softball questions and just read off a script the whole time. All of it prewritten and very obvious she doesn't understand the depth of what she is reading and the actual complexities of SSA programs. SSA is in trouble while she's at the helm.
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