Government Executive has out a piece titled Martin O’Malley is on a one-year sprint to save Social Security. The title comes from Government Executive, not O'Malley. I'm sure that O'Malley hasn't claimed that he can "save" Social Security in any time frame, much less in a year.
The primary thrust of the piece is O'Malley's call for additional budget resources for his agency. However, there's also crowing about O'Malley's accomplishments as Commissioner. O'Malley has certainly changed the tone at the agency and has some important accomplishments in his first six months as Commissioner but I'm pretty sure that the main accomplishment claimed in this piece -- improvement in 800 number answering -- isn't much of an accomplishment.
Social Security's budget resources are so thin that it cannot make any significant improvement in one area of performance without taking resources from another area of performance -- borrowing from Peter to pay Paul as the old quote goes. If the 800 number service has improved, some other function must have worsened.
Those on the inside can confirm or deny this but I think that the improvement in 800 number answering has been achieved by calling upon additional backup for the agency's Teleservice Centers (TSC's). The backup comes from the Program Service Centers (PSC's) whose primary responsibility is computing and paying benefits under Title II of the Social Security Act. This has gone on to some extent for many years. I've heard it referred to as "spiking," as in asking the PSC's to step in to handle overflow when there's a spike in call volume. It's not hard to improve 800 number phone answering if all you have to do is to shift the boundary for what's considered a "spike." Of course, the problem is that this causes degradation in the primary PSC workload of computing and paying benefits, which I have seen. Doing a better job of answering the phones is great but asking claimants who have already been approved to wait an extra month for the benefits they are owed isn't so great. Also, changing the spiking policies so that the PSC's give more help to the TSC's isn't sustainable. The payment backlogs will eventually become their own crisis.
Finding ways to make yourself look better comes naturally to a seasoned politician like O'Malley. It's not a bad thing for the agency. At the least, it gives members of Congress confidence that if they give the Social Security Administration additional operating funds that they will be well spent. There is another side to the coin, however. Some members of Congress can say "Look, it's what we've been telling you. Social Security doesn't need more operating funds. It just needs better management."
14 comments:
I’ve not heard the “spiking” from the psc occuring. That being said I would not be surprised . The processing at the pecs is atrocious. What has occurred is all offices were asked to list their local numbers on google. This channeled a ton of calls to the field offices . In some cases offices were only getting to 20% of calls . So TSC answered rate goes up but rates in field drop dramatically. They have set certain targets and let a lot of work go . For instance cdrs have completely stopped and the focus now is processing disability cases. It’s all optics - we are in a complete downfall and the few remaining staff are all beyond stretched
The office I work in, as I assume most other field offices are doing, has for the better part of a decade plus been robbing Peter to pay Paul. In office waiting times are poor so claims specialists are sent to help, neglecting paying and processing claims. Ditto for backed up phones. Meanwhile, management expects the same level of work from everyone. It's very frustrating.
Spike calls have been around for years. The 800## has overflow calls that get sent to the PC's to answer.
If you're an internal employee and wondering why the dramatic push for you to complete the FEVS survey, O'malley plans to toot his own horn to Congress with the results of his spectacular tenure. If you're hoping for something for us that work our tail off, it's not gonna happen.
PC7 overtime has been severely cut this spring. Perhaps some OT was reallocated address the 800#?
PC7 was barely keeping up with the backlogs with lots of overtime. Without OT, I am now hearing that various backlogs in PC7 are rapidly growing.
Such as SAES Court remand cases. A remand case I checked on, the favorable ALJ decision was September 2023, NH still not in pay, the ACR sitting in a backlog. 9 months after the favorable ALJ decision!
@1012 - the Agency didn’t let cdr work “go.” The agency negotiated with OPM to redefine what is program integrity work. Long story short, the agency doesn’t need to do so many cdrs anymore, which allows flexibility to do other work. O’Malley did that for SSA, and it’s a wonderful thing.
AFAIK, Spiking is not related to the current 800# "improvements" - it is a function of FOs taking more calls as others above have noted - so effectively shunting calls from less expensive to more expensive employees, who are already hopelessly overworked. Dumb, in other words, but it makes the Commish look good. Spiking has been around for a long time, and is equally dumb. I would love to know how many PC actions are lost every year due to pulling BAs from their workloads, and how many calls to TSCs and and FOs that that generates.
SSA has not had a Democratic Commissioner since it split off from HEW/HHS. He's trying harder than any other his predecessors and the alternative is Commissioner Grover Norquist in 2025 if Trump wins. So Iet's give O'Malley another minute.
This.
It’s untenable. I’m in a field office with what’s probably considered a desirable amount of work vs most offices, but it’s still impossible. Mental health is a huge issue for the staff.
SMFH. He’s wants to tout the results and response rate to garner support for more adequate funding to hire more staff. If you can’t see how that directly helps you on the front line, then you may be better suited for less demanding work anyway.
A one year term doesn’t really make him sensitive to the consequences of his decisions. His strategy for convincing Congress to fund hiring is indistinguishable from a strategy of juicing the numbers so he can have another “success” like his terms as mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland. I would have more confidence in the “I’m all about frontline hiring” story he keeps telling if I thought he were going to be around. Mainly because there will be no glory in 2026. Being an actual commissioner of SSA for an actual term is more characterized as “the slow boring of hard boards” rather than as an exciting rally in a baseball game.
I just wonder if Trump will remove him if he wins, and that is also part of the "1 year race".
Well, he certainly "would" replace him, probably on Day 1.
The use of "will" is odd, as it implies that you think Trump is definitely going to win.
To be fair, O'Malley is surrounded by all the people who thrived under the prior Trump appointees. It's gonna take time to push these politicized SES and SES equivalents out of the way, to change the agency's messed up micromanaging from above culture
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