Equite Action Plan Report

     The Social Security Administration has recently issued its Equity Action Plan: 2023 Update. It sounds like they're about a year behind in getting this out. It's full of vague, largely unmeasurable goals. Look at it yourself but what I've pulled  out below is all the content that I can find that seems vaguely interesting to me, at least:

• ... In FY 2023, to restore SSI applications closer to pre-pandemic levels, we launched a new SSI “Basic Needs” campaign in support of our FYs 2022-2023 Agency Priority Goal (APG) to increase SSI applications nationwide by 15 percent and increase applications from underserved communities by 25 percent, 1,758,656 and 127,749 applications, respectively. We have seen an increase in the overall number of SSI applications, nationally and in underserved communities. Since the campaign launched:

a. Our digital marketing tactics generated 1.81 million referrals from our SSI website to the online SSI Protective Filing tool, yielding 345,000 SSI applications through September 3, 2023. The tool allows individuals and third-party helpers to establish a protective filing10 online and request an appointment to file for benefits.

b. Our marketing generated more than 1.9 billion impressions across all tactics and over 2.7 million website visits.

c. Through September 29, 2023, we exceeded our APG target for SSI applications in underserved communities relative to the 2021 baseline by receiving nearly 135,000 applications. ...


• In May 2023, we established the Office of Transformation (OT), which includes our Customer Experience (CX) team. The OT’s mission is to facilitate the most critical business enhancements that serve the public and support our frontline employees. ...
• As of August 23, 2023, there were about 220,000 pending [SSI] underpayments, of which more than 140,000 underpayments (with corresponding alerts) have been pending for a year or more or are priority cases. ...
  

    I can be critical of the vagueness of the report but in an organization as large as the Social Security Administration a 1% improvement in service which might seem trivial to me could still improve the lives of a not insignificant number of people. We'd all love to see transformative changes but with current levels of funding all that's possible are the tiniest baby steps.