From NPR:
… Laura Haltzel was the former associate commissioner for the SSA's Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics in the agency's Maryland headquarters. Rather than volunteer for reassignment and face more uncertainty, she decided to take an offer of early retirement.
Haltzel said there are problems with the expectation that workers in roles like hers would be able to quickly jump in and replace the thousands of frontline workers that have left. She called the plan a "sort of mythical idea."
"We've lost an extreme amount of expertise and knowledge that we simply are not going to get back," she said. "Let's say somebody in my team, who is a statistician, [you] suddenly turn them into a claims processor. It takes two years of training for someone to become proficient at taking a Social Security claim because of the complexity of the law. That is not something that you can simply plug somebody into overnight and keep up at the same pace as it had been operating previously."
"People are taking reassignments out of fear that they will have no jobs because the entire economy in the D.C. area now is affected by a loss of employment across the federal landscape," she said. "And for all of these individuals to find new jobs in the private sector, that's simply not a reality, particularly from the Social Security Administration, for which there is no private equivalent." …
Haltzel said she's deeply concerned about the loss of expertise that has left the SSA in recent weeks. She said her former team, which analyzed whether the agency was doing a good job serving beneficiaries, has been cut by more than half.
"I hope that we're able to sustain a basic minimum of knowledge in order to maintain the functioning of the agency," Haltzel said. "But frankly, given that they have no control over who takes the reassignments and who simply retires and leaves, they could lose individuals where we are one person deep in knowledge. And once that knowledge is gone, it is gone. These people will not come back." …
10 comments:
All these concerns and problems are management’s poor performance. SSA management, in general, lacked/lacks an emphasis on cross-training and knowledge sharing.
Didn’t the convicted felon say he wasn’t going to touch Social Security?
This is the part the public and DOGE don’t understand. It isn’t an even swap for swap. I’m reading in an employee chat how people from IT or the press office are now TEs with no field experience. I’ve been a CS and a TE it takes 4-5 years to be a TE. And training is going to be swamped. People from OSLWD and OEST going to be disability processing specialists which takes 2 years to be proficient. Folks working on literal executive orders and ACOSS decision memo projects going to FOs as OS and MSS. People from mission critical roles like OQR, the PC and the field retiring. For such a small reduction in a physical footprint we are going to suffer a huge reduction in service. It’s going to take months to see it, but Frank is walking into a broken agency that doesn’t have a quick fix for this self inflicted wound. The knowledge loss is unheard of and I worry about people who need disability and SSI specifically going forward because that takes the most hands on work and the knowledge isn’t there.
It's disheartening to see how the loss of experienced professionals like Laura Haltzel has affected the Social Security Administration (SSA). The complexity of roles within the agency, especially in areas like research and statistics, can't be easily replaced. This situation underscores the importance of retaining institutional knowledge and expertise for smooth operations. For more insights on related topics, feel free to visit oursite .
It would be nice if they would tell us who they want to cut instead of making people guess. They’re going to lose people in the places where they need them to be. They could also identify people with the proper past work experience to fill in any gaps. It doesn’t make any sense how they are doing this. I feel bad for HR. They seem to be working weekends to keep up with the paperwork. All of this mess is going to take decades to fix presuming SSA lasts that long.
Wake the f**k up, rube! It’s poor management by Congress and the GOP in particular. How can we justify cross training when the work is constantly backlogged without diverting resources to cross training? And which party has consistently refused to give the agency adequate funding?
So many Claims Specialists in the FO and PSC have taken the incentive payments and retired or quit. Years of experience and knowledge walking out the door.
It is absurd to think that other employees can transfer into front line technical positions such as these, to replace the ones who left, without a huge drop-off in performance and productivity. The negative effects of this will be seen more and more, in the coming months.
100% to this point the RIFs have been a big psyop maybe you will lose your job maybe not
Sleazy E and his Peter Pan Posse see no value in people with institutional knowledge. Sending the Fork e-mail that insulted people who committed their lives working for the agency was designed to get rid of as many competent long term employees as possible. And it's worked for the goal Republicans have had for years to kill Social Security and Medicare.
Re 3:11 - prior “ It would be nice if they would tell us who they want to cut instead of making people guess.”
Why, so the massive frozen middle can prepare to fight it? Unfortunately the unions and entrenched SES’ers, along with archaic HR policies have shackled the federal government from making meaningful changes in personnel, skills, hiring, org structure and ways of working.
Any changes that are contemplated are fought tooth and nail - grievances and MSPB threats abound if there is ever an inkling of making meaningful changes.
Hence, what you are seeing now is an across the board attempt to clean house. RIF’ing entire functions is the only way to change stuff but of course they will certainly lose good people in the process.
Would be great to actually stack-rank high to low performers and lay off the lowest performing layers. Horrors though - that would inspire a whole new wave of complaints of unfairness etc.
It is a no win situation:
- socializing changes will stop change in its tracks
- not socializing but just doing them as is being done now inspires all the conspiracy theories of anti agency efforts
I, for one, am looking forward to a leaner SSA that actually functions and is not a bureaucracy.
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