Social Security has asked for Office of Management and Budget approval to publish final rules on "Use of Electronic Payroll Data To Improve Program Administration." This has not been controversial. It is the only Social Security regulatory package awaiting OMB approval. Without OMB approval before the change of administration, this one could languish for months if not years.
Why is this issue taking so long to be implemented? This has been a decades-long complaint from the front-line workers that we have to manually verify payroll data for every person receiving benefits. If we can't access electronic payroll data with employers, that means we have to ask the claimant to print/mail/fax/hand-deliver paystubs for months (or even years) from their employer (or past employers in many cases). If they cannot supply these, the next step is SSA will mail/fax a request to said employer(s) asking for years of payroll data for a single individual, and when/if returned, the SSA employee must manually enter paystub data for each employer. This is subject to human error, and long wait times for verification, leading to overpayments and underpayments... which leads to recons, hearings, and so on. I can imagine a program where payroll data populates into a claimant's screens and the employee simply scans it to ensure accuracy before final approval. This would cut so much wasted time!
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