May 10, 2024

SSA Commissioner Touts Accomplishments

I can't tell. Is that logo in the center a physical object or generated electronically?

     From a Social Security website touting Commissioner Martin O'Malley's accomplishments during his first 100 days in office:

... Between November and April, SSA has reduced the average waiting time from 42 minutes to 24 minutes. Further, no one calling SSA receives busy signals and over 35 percent of our callers now receive a call back instead of holding. ...

SSA is updating its Program Operations Manual System (POMS) so agency employees are no longer forced to require wet signatures from customers where eSignature options are available. ...

[Since the agency's appropriations bill passed] Commissioner O’Malley has lifted the agency-wide hiring freeze and approved 1,600 critical hires for the teleservice centers. We also authorized 1,290 field office hires, 600 hires for the State disability determination services, and 300 hires for our hearing offices. ...

New Union Management Cooperation Councils (UMCCs) - which the Special Advisor to the Federal Labor Relations Authority described as being at the forefront of Union-Management collaboration - are engaged in productive and specific pre-decisional discussions between AFGE and SSA management on a variety of topics including improvements to new-hire training, which has been a key area for improvement towards retention of staff. 

Monthly Labor Roundtables and the UMCC provide regular opportunities to maintain an open dialogue between Labor and Management at all levels of SSA, which improves employee morale and efficient. ...

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

The logo is generated electronically. A colleague checked out the conference room to be sure.

Anonymous said...

"no one calling SSA receives busy signals", true, but you will sit on hold for 20+ minutes to only then receive a message that all representatives are busy and to call back at another time. I'd rather get a busy signal.

Anonymous said...

Can’t please everyone

Anonymous said...

I'm glad they initiated the option of "no to all" on the ssi app. I'm old and remember the Policy fights (with also Operations) insisting that the only way to "know" that all the questions were asked and answered was to require all to be answered individually. The fear was CRs would click that and move on. It ignored 1) CRs are (mainly) professional and know their job and 2) often do a great "pre-interview" eliciting responses to many of these questions prior to actually taking the application. (Think of Policy kinda like OIG - real letter of the law types who often don't let common sense have any air.) Shame it took 30 years.

Anonymous said...

It’s occasionally helpful but when you have repeat filers (which is the majority of claims) things propagate and make it irrelevant.

But, I can appreciate the fact that they are trying to help efficiency.

Anonymous said...

That looks like a campaign website. The guy also spends every waking hour filming YouTube spots. What job is he angling for?

Anonymous said...

O’Malley has done a good job to date

Anonymous said...

Another term when Biden wins re-election.

Anonymous said...

Did they take that pic with a potato?

Unknown said...

That logo is a physical object in the room.

Anonymous said...

That seal is real and is in the room. This COSS is big on icons and branding. Look at the follow up or after action room next to the star room too. lol.

Anonymous said...

All the questions still have to be asked and answered individually. The no to all button saves clicks, not time, and doesn't even show up on a lot of claims. It's pretty useless.