Social Security has recently released its Action Plan 2024. It's a good summary of what has been done during the time that the current Commissioner has been on the job.
Social Security can be proud of what has been accomplished this year but there's going to be no fundamental change for agency employees or those who deal with the agency until the agency gets a significantly higher appropriation. The low hanging fruit has been picked. There's no way to manage the agency out of the hole it's in. As former Commissioner Michael Astrue said, it's going to take "brute force," as in a lot more employees.
11 comments:
Everyone who reads this blog knows one fact to be true: if DJT wins in November there is 100% chance O'Malley is gone and this plan will be disregarded.
True. Fortunately, that is looking less and less likely.
As an FO EE With over 23 yrs of service, the stuff the Commissioner Tictok has done has been all show and no substance. The change in CE policy was rolled out in such a manner that in a year we will be back to sending those claims back to DDS again.
I need to hang in four more years and I am done.
3:40 - that’s general feel in our Area . Offices once staffed at 27 have 13 and 16. Today he got on camera and said he was giving us bad news ….more ssi redeterminations. Charles is spot on - we’ve hit the wall and no matter how many short clips he does or stupid “stats” the only way out is serious hiring . The problem is it’s not going to happen next year based on budget picture and take going to get worse. More rzs , route more to field with less staff and walking out the remaining folks is going to be legacy of a o malley - he’s lost the field employees
You just gotta “hustle” according to Omalley /s
Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like O'Malley is being blamed for lack of aggressive new hiring? But at the same time he cannot hire due to lack of budget? Is this his fault?
Could it be that he is aggressively lobbying politicians behind the scenes on these issues, or is that all for show too? From the outside, O'malley seems much more engaged in public relations and way more effective at raising SSA's profile at the White House and Congress.
He has been in the position of less than a year. I have been critical about SSA's intransigence and lack of leadership in the past, but how it is realistic to think O'malley is capable of turning things around in less than a year?
“ but how it is realistic to think O'malley is capable of turning things around in less than a year?”
It’s not, but a lot of the posters who complain the loudest are current feeling the most pain (operations/ front facing staff). A lot of these issues are decadeS in the making (ex: lack of upgraded technology) and some are only 5-10 years (low staffing. Remember, SSA was ranked the #1 agency of its size to work for in 2011, when they had something like 70k employees). Things will take equal time to improve, but when people feel they are at the bottom of hell working for SSA and feeling the brunt daily, they (understandably) want changes NOW.
11:24 & 1:19, you are clearly missing the point to what everyone is saying. O'Malley is all hat no cattle. Don't get between him and a camera. Do we really need some slickly produced video each day? Do we really need to be opening brand new offices in high priced cities? How about all the building issues we are having now that cost money to fix? Instead, O'Malley had a plum opportunity to be more frugal and simply shift costs to give front line workers more overtime while cutting things like return to office. He made his bed and now he's lost a large amount of staff, and pissed off front line workers by rewarding hard work with more work (but not more money). He couldn't even grant our reasonable request to have half-days on Wednesday to we could catch up.
Lipstick on a pig.
Someone asked our Area Director at an all-hands about a few bullet points from this and possible timelines and he diplomatically, but emphatically shit all over the entire document. He called it a wishlist and said he's seen no indication that there are major changes in resources to make any of it happen.
As he pointed out, anybody can make a plan that basically says "do more good things, do less bad things". Making it happen is the tricky part.
I see comments about the need for new staff which I agree is critical. What I don't see is any talk about where 5,000 or more employees would come from with hiring at GS 5/7 Claims Reps would come from with pay rates in even the highest area, SF are only $49K for GS 5 where a clerk in a grocery store now makes about the same.
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