344K hours of OT through July. Does anyone want to guess what will happen if that number was close to zero? This is just OHO. Have to figure Operations OT totals are significantly higher & only reason the Agency stays afloat.
Exactly. SSA employees are working their damn hardest to get claims processed, it's reflected in the OT hours. Even with massive overtime numbers, the agency still only has so many people to process claims and there are only so many hours in a day. I don't think a lot of people realize how bleak the situation is looking for FY2024. Offices/Components are running out the clock on trying to utilize their FY2023 OT they have left. All of this overtime and the agency is still at a massive disadvantage in getting things processed. SSA is realistically not going to be able to hire, nor offer overtime for workloads. Hold on to your butts, things are going to get wild after October.
I am curious about the OT though...ALJs are working down the backlog pretty well, especially aged cases. They don't have that many cases pending each. So is it decision writers using the OT? Support staff pulling queries and exhibiting the files (which seems like a perpetual challenge)? Schedulers now that it's no longer centralized?
Is there any sense that OT is being used where it's most needed, either in terms of which component gets it or who in each component uses it? It seems like Operations (especially DDSs but not sure if they can use the same pool of OT...FOs, PSCs, and WSUs though) are probably in more need than OHO at this point.
Support staff uses OT for pulling and catching up on work that comes into the efile. SSA leadership has allowed offices to become so short-staffed that support staff cannot keep up. Cases are barely able to have documents exhibited before hearings - upper leadership in OHO cannot seem to get over short sightedness. They say budget is the issue, but rather than having leadership meetings by TEAMs they spend thousands if dollars flying each other around to visit under the guise of holding in person meetings (most recently Kansas City and before that Atlanta). Managers in offices have to suffer through TEAMS regional management meetings where they talk about mundane issues that they have already heard about ad nauseam - rather than getting much needed work done... Of course leadership meetings are a drop in the bucket budget wise, but we keep waiting for them to lead by example... waiting....
344K hours of OT through July. Does anyone want to guess what will happen if that number was close to zero? This is just OHO. Have to figure Operations OT totals are significantly higher & only reason the Agency stays afloat.
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ReplyDeleteExactly. SSA employees are working their damn hardest to get claims processed, it's reflected in the OT hours. Even with massive overtime numbers, the agency still only has so many people to process claims and there are only so many hours in a day. I don't think a lot of people realize how bleak the situation is looking for FY2024. Offices/Components are running out the clock on trying to utilize their FY2023 OT they have left. All of this overtime and the agency is still at a massive disadvantage in getting things processed. SSA is realistically not going to be able to hire, nor offer overtime for workloads. Hold on to your butts, things are going to get wild after October.
I am curious about the OT though...ALJs are working down the backlog pretty well, especially aged cases. They don't have that many cases pending each. So is it decision writers using the OT? Support staff pulling queries and exhibiting the files (which seems like a perpetual challenge)? Schedulers now that it's no longer centralized?
ReplyDeleteIs there any sense that OT is being used where it's most needed, either in terms of which component gets it or who in each component uses it? It seems like Operations (especially DDSs but not sure if they can use the same pool of OT...FOs, PSCs, and WSUs though) are probably in more need than OHO at this point.
Support staff uses OT for pulling and catching up on work that comes into the efile. SSA leadership has allowed offices to become so short-staffed that support staff cannot keep up. Cases are barely able to have documents exhibited before hearings - upper leadership in OHO cannot seem to get over short sightedness. They say budget is the issue, but rather than having leadership meetings by TEAMs they spend thousands if dollars flying each other around to visit under the guise of holding in person meetings (most recently Kansas City and before that Atlanta). Managers in offices have to suffer through TEAMS regional management meetings where they talk about mundane issues that they have already heard about ad nauseam - rather than getting much needed work done... Of course leadership meetings are a drop in the bucket budget wise, but we keep waiting for them to lead by example... waiting....
ReplyDeleteThere’s a group of OHO employees helping to bail DDS offices out as best they can (working to help move that 1 million claim-backlong along).
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