The stress on Social Security employees isn't going away. They will remain overburdened indefinitely. My firm asks them to straighten out their mistakes but they don't have time to do it. It's getting to the point that I think the work isn't going to get done now. It's not going to get done later. It's never going to get done, at least not in the foreseeable future.
What kinds of mistakes or omissions am I seeing? Let me list a few:
- Claimant's monthly benefits are authorized but nothing is done about paying the back benefits or attorney fees.
- Claimant receives a small payment that is apparently their back benefits but it seems far too low. No award certificate is issued so the claimant and attorney can't figure out whether there has been a mistake.
- There's what I call a phantom windfall offset. Claimant filed an SSI claim which was quickly denied on income or resources. When the Title II claim is approved, no back benefits are paid because they're waiting on payment of the SSI benefits so they can do the windfall offset. Meanwhile, no back benefits or attorney fees are paid.
- A field office employee makes one telephone call to a claimant about implementing SSI benefits. They can't leave a message so they immediately deny the claim for failure to cooperate. (They're supposed to make repeated efforts to contact the claimant and those who may be able to help, such as the claimant's attorney but that takes time, so they just get the claim off their desk by denying it.)
- A fee petition is approved. That's a little unusual so it doesn't get paid.
This is a depressing, discouraging situation for an attorney like me who wants to help his clients and who wants to receive the fees he's entitled to for helping them.
Social Security is undergoing enormous stress. I think it's fair to say it's falling apart. Asking employees to work harder isn't going to solve the problem. The systems updates and IT changes the agency is making hardly help at all. Making employees come into the office every day would make little or no difference. The only solution is a lot more employees, like 10,000 more, but that might cost another billion dollars or so a year so it's out of the question now.
I don't think the message is getting through to the public or members of Congress about just how bad things are.
My only suggestion is that the agency should start closing many small field offices, which will mostly be in areas represented in Congress by Republicans. The administration needs to turn a deaf ear to the howls of protest from Republican members of Congress. You get the service you pay for. What's going on now is unsustainable.
33 comments:
Don't even get me started on the phantom windfall. Such a waste of time for both the PC and FO and the claimant is stuck and the FO has to deal with the the claimant and attorney because PC isn't public facing. Why PC cannot have half a brain and clear them?!?! It takes you longer to create the e4345 request than it would to just think logically of the situation. Prior SSI claim denied 12-years earlier is CLEARLY not going to have windfall. The FO is too busy doing RZs to help you with that. We don't have time to be proactive anymore. It's RZs, phones, reception all the time.
And you think it's bad now. Wait until next year if the House budget markup ends up being the final number: Decrease in overall budget but increases program integrity funding. Before too long SSA won't even be able to RSHI anymore because all our budget does is fund facilities, guards, and RZ/CDR.
You have no idea. Entire programs are being lost. The only things anyone in management cares about right now are equity initiatives. That's it.
The regular functions of the agency are dying. Because for SSA management, it's all about getting those brownie points with Kilolo/OMB.
And it starts at the very top. Combine poor administrative budgets with self-serving yes men and clueless, non-permanent leadership at the very top and you get the death of a Government program.
We are experiencing all the same issues Charles gives as examples as well as improper calculation of attorney fees, failure to withhold attorney fees, and more. The percentage of time our small office has to spend calling and writing SSA to address these mistakes and fielding calls from upset clients has grown exponentially in the past two years. I doubt members of Congress have any sense for what is happening in the field offices and payment centers.
I recently saw a notice of award with:
The basis for the award wrong.
The state of claimant's residence wrong.
The state of the Court that directed the award wrong.
The beginning and ending months of the closed period award wrong.
The appeal info wrong.
The monthly benefit amounts wrong.
The withheld amount wrong.
The total past-due benefits amount was right, and the withheld amount was actually minimally more than it should have been...so I guess it was all harmless, but yeah the PC seems overworked.
We are having the same issues. The worst problems are with the cases that have been to district court, and then approved after the remand hearing. Cases under age 55 are all sent to the Special Appeals Examining section of OCO where they go to die. Folks who have been waiting for years in poverty are the last to be paid. They are currently working on post court cases of mine that were approved in October 2022. I have not had a Award notice on any of the 2023s. NO award, no medicare, and that office does not care. There is no good reason that these claimants who have waited the longest for their decision, are PUNISHED by all being sent to this black hole, rather than going through regular payment processes. With these, and all my payment issues, we have made the decision to have impacted clients call and get a constituent service case set with ONE specific senator in my state. While he is right wing, his staff is now getting highly educated on the issue. Critical mass of the same issues gets results. Educate your representatives. We send a packet to the Senator after our client opens the request telling them exactly where the case sits, and providing information. If we all pound the politicians, they will use the information to go after the agency and the agency will have to respond.
"What's going on now is unsustainable." This applies to the entire federal government.
More employees and making things a little easier would help. The verification processes are getting to be too much and placing too much burden on SS employees.
Honestly, lots of SSA employees are burned out and just don't care anymore. Leadership only focuses on intake of work and never, and I mean NEVER, focuses on getting the work actually done. Field employees take 6-8 tele-appointments a day, and between them, you are expected to jump on phones to help with those as well. For those 7 hours a day (35 hours per week) you are tied up taking in the work, your pending workloads are absolutely being DUMPED on with more and more work. Paper applications, recons, tax withholding forms, Work CDRs, Med CDRs, iAppeals, overpayment actions, requests from PC, requests from DDS, requests from Teleservice center, your voicemail is being bombarded by claimants...it never never never ends. For FO employees, there is absolutely no time to get stuff done. Sure, you can work overtime but why? Why the hell should I be expected to work extra because leadership doesn't give us time to get work done in the 8 hours of regular time we are there. Let the agency crumble. Let the ship sink. Until the stink is big enough, the pile of crap of an agency problems just gets swept under the rug.
I've worked in the agency for over 10 years, and most every systems update/IT change has simply added more complexity and more keystrokes to get the same things done. For the past year, OHO has been required to use 2 systems (CPMS, which worked pretty well, and HACPS, which is a bloated mess and which we will eventually be stuck with). Even the attempted move to another time keeping system (which has been around for years) was an abject failure.
Outsource and AI
I'm also in OHO, and calling HACPS a bloated mess is an insult to bloated messes.
Ah, yes. Let's give AI the PII and PHI of every American citizen that has a social security number and also outsource all that information to some private contractor who will do god knows what with 330 million peoples social security information. Great idea....nothing could go wrong with that....
SSA has used plenty of automation tools which have failed over and over.
AI isnt the solution. Outsourcing wont solve the problem as well. The agency is unable to get its own outsourced mail room in order, before we consider outsourcing any other functions.
The agency needs more $$ and the Claims Specialist job in the Field office needs to be upgraded to Grade 12. As well as the corresponding positions in the processing centers.
Working with ancient technology combined with incorrect manual inputs exponentially increases the amount of unnecessary work that could have been prevented in the first place. Every day, we work on correcting prior mistakes and issues that have been pending for months and years. An agency such as SSA should not dedicate their time correcting mistakes and making more mistakes on top of these mistakes. This agency should have the proper technology that can update records correctly so that we can focus on incoming fresh and timely work instead. There is no reason a claimant should wait 2 years for their back pay or a reconsideration because someone at SSA paid them incorrectly.
Some components still have work pending dating back to early January 2021 (probably even 2020.) On top of that, the best workers are being utilized to mentor a revolving door of trainees leaving less time to do their own work. Mentors have been wasting their time mentoring trainees who don’t last over a year due to how overwhelming, unsustainable, and unreasonable the work is. Since our new talent mostly leaves, SSA is left with frazzled folks just collecting their last few paychecks until they retire soon. Almost everyone I know is trying to escape. Once that big retirement wave hits and the best talent manages to escape, it going to be even worse. There is no improvement in the foreseeable future.
Not sure closing offices in conservative areas will help. Those people will just have to drive longer distances to get the same lousy service. Quite a few small offices are in urban areas
It would be beneficial if office placement wasn't political. A small office near mine moved to the edge of a decent sized city(300K) and split work with the office already in that city. Meanwhile, in another Congressional district about 30 miles away there is no office serving 3 cities with a population of about 350K. They have to drive to one of the two offices serving a smaller area. The area not served is booming and has been for 25 years.
I left for the VA last year and I just did a presentation for a new employee orientation, half the new employee orientation was people coming over from SSA
To 10:57am, The PC technicians sending the E4345s are only GS9 who are not trained in reading the SSID. It is in policy that they have to send the E4345 before releasing the backpay. Otherwise, they get charged an error that goes into their file.
Exactly. Half my job is cleaning up mistakes that could’ve been prevented if people given just a little more damned time to do their job right the first time. A tiny bit of flexibility could save us billions of dollars in manpower going forward every year. But instead, it’s just constant nagging to do everything faster than the last fool who didn’t have time to do the work properly, couldn’t have cared less about doing it anyway, and is now, thanks to the warped priorities used by the agency’s top brass to award promotions, the very same idiot telling you to do it faster. The result, predictably, is more fraud, more waste and more mistakes.
7:03 PM. Training would not be hard. There are so many that come over from PC to my small office that are clear as day not windfall. Multiply that x1200 field offices and you can easily justify training a small group of technicians in PC to read a SSID. If it actually requires a windfall comp, then send it. But stop wasting administrative resources and punishing the claimants because you don't want to learn to read a SSID. And don't blame it on GS rating. I could have my GS-5s doing it. 3 ifs. No to all 3 = no windfall. If yes to any = possible windfall send to FO.
Not entirely true at all. There are several scenarios where the BA can review the SSID record; be able to accurately, correctly determine that SSI Offset will not apply; and those actions be entirely policy compliant (not chargeable errors). GN 02610.055 is one such policy, but many others exist (including one that has detailed instructions on when a two-day action "workaround" is required in MACADE to process some cases). There are also plenty of fairly decent Windfall Offset Processing guides & resources.
I agree with all the comments. One of my problems is getting access to the exhibit file after submitting my 1696. When access is denied I call the local office and I’m either told that they have my 1696 but it hasn’t been uploaded to the file yet, even it was submitted 1 or 2 months ago, or they don’t have the 1696 even though I submitted it with the appeal I filed online. So I fax in another 1696, attention CS who has the file, and then I check back again. Now I’m told they have it, but it’s still not uploaded. Maybe I’m lucky and I’m speaking with someone who does the inputs while we are on the phone. I wait a couple of days but I still can’t access the file. I call back and if I can get through without my call being dropped after waiting on hold and if again I’m lucky to speak to someone who can read the file, I’m informed that the inputs were done correctly, that my information is in RASR and eVIEW. They have nothing else to offer me as to why I can’t get access to the file. This is at initial and recon. I have no idea what to do next.
Computers and systems were supposed to save us. They have destroyed us. While some automation is good, it is only as good as the code upon which it is based. The code is only as good as the coder understands the process it is automated. This why we ate now an epic fail as the code designer and code builder have no nexus to our process. Long live the lowest bidder
I'm mainly referring to the Retap alerts that the PCs get every month. MCS triggers awards with possible SSI offset and placed the retro in S9. BAs have to send the E4345 before releasing this backpay, which is stated in an OB. Most of these end up to be no offset. Believe me when I say, we don't want to be sending these E4345s either when most of them results in no offset. Creating the E4345 is time consuming enough. I agree that training would be easy to recognize when these will be no offset. There has been a pilot program in the PCs for many years now where a small group of technicians respond to these E4345s. Nothing ever resulted in this group being expanded.
To 10:36, no offense intended but your understanding of how to process those RETAP alerts is not accurate.
First, go to SM 00619.070 for a brief explanation on why these alerts even occur.
Next, click on over to SM 00815.500, bookmark that policy, and learn how to process those alerts. There is a very detailed, easy-to-follow chart outlining what to look for on the SSID record and how to interpret that information in order to determine if development to the FO (creating an e4345) is even necessary. Often times, it's not and the BA can actually take action to resolve the entire alert issue that same-day.
If you are in OCO and mentioning an OB, there is no such OB that states what you've suggested. OB 08-0379 & the attached desk guide mirror SM 00815.500 and flushes out several scenarios where no e4345 is necessary.
Your comments themselves are providing perfect insight into the problems mentioned in the original post. Whether its SSA employees refusing to learn or utilize the resources available to them OR having been incorrectly taught or failed to have been taught, it matters. A BA in the PC needlessly creating e4345 after e4345, as in this example, piling on so much unnecessary work for the already overburdened FOs AND also, to be frank, cruelly holding up the release of beneficiaries' desperately needed & deserved past-due benefits - it is inexcusable. Leadership should be far more ashamed of how rampant & persistent these problems are.
6:30 I sure hope those new ssa folks dont screw up VA, we just kinda sorta got it functional again, dont need them screwing it back up.
Maybe things have changed since I retired. A few years ago a change was made in MCS so a CS could make a simple entry that tells the system no SSI is involved. No PC involvement needed for almost all of them and it releases the back payments immediately.
anon@12:10pm,
Yes, you can do that on cases that will process through the system.
However, on the 35% of cases that won't do that and require manual awards, it doesn't work. And, the BAs that process those awards via MACADE put the cases in windfall offset status whenever there is a SSI record involved. I literally had one yesterday that they put in windfall offset status because it had a 25 year old year old denied SSI record established. You can't make this stuff up.
I've tried and tried and tried to instruct them not to do it in the award remarks; however, turns out most BAs apparently have decided that it is not in their job descriptions to actually read the remarks on manual awards (to the extent that, sometimes I wonder why I even bother to waste the time to add them in the first place).
If you have received notice that your 1696 was processed and you are the representative on record, but you cannot access the case, please send the following information to OHO.HQ.ARS@ssa.gov:
Rep name
Rep ID
Claimant name (first and last)
Last 4 digits of the claimant SSN
Error message received when attempting to access the case
I use this feature when I have this issue. The file needs to be transferred to DDS before you can access efile/ere. I call 800# and once status says DDS PROCESSING MED PORTION. I’m attempt access. If file is at DDS but can’t access, contact FO to make sure you are entered without any other Reps on file. If you still don’t have access after all this email Ms. Mow using the instructions above. I get access in 3-7 days.
How can you be a GS-9 and not be able to read a SSR?
Wow, I retired as a BA from a PSC in 6/2021. Older BAs were trained to answer the 800# for peak periods and could read an SSR. Some BAs were taught to do special workloads of SSI offsets (pilot). Well before COVID happened, there was less training of BAs for 800# service. There would be BA technical advisors in the Mod who never had 800# training at all. Then they started training additional BAs to do the special workload of SSI offsets (pilot) and were allowing BAs who never learned 800# service to do these offsets. They were given a quick training in SSI (not good). I was appalled.
Our CSRs were promoted, but they had no knowledge of the systems even though they’ve worked for over 10 years. Tons of union disputes in my office which is lazy employees who are never held accountable. Terrible management. It’s time to ball lol.
Everyone avoids SSI, they come as T2 and do their best to not learn SSI. It leads to simple problems that can be dealt with at the initial claim not being addressed. Once again, SSA employees need to be held accountable if they don’t want to work or avoid workloads.
So the problem here is a CS that is delegating the work. Yes they can go into the system and add you as Auth rep, but since it’s not part of their workload they don’t do it. Bad employees are not held accountable, good employees are rewarded with fixing and stressing about all the work the bad employees won’t do or avoid. Management sees this and does nothing because they fear union involvement.
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