It seems quieter at Social Security since Frank Bisignano was confirmed as Commissioner. I don’t know if it’s a good thing but I have less to write about.
21 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Confirmed Commissioners tend to be a lot less active and productive than ACOSSes. O’Malley was an outlier. Saul is closer to the norm, historically, particularly for GOP appointees, whose general approach amounts to passive destruction while keeping a low profile to avoid angering the olds.
You’re bored because the most powerful are well cared for. Frank gets his tax cut. ALJs still have full time telework. We in the field office are dying but are viewed as replaceable widget-makers. And the band plays on…
If you listen closely, you can hear the claims slipping between the cracks and the backlog of work not done creaking and groaning like a glacier before calving off a huge chunk.
You might be less unhappy if you would stop deluding yourself about ALJs having full time telework (for the billionth time, ALJs have not had full time telework for about 3 years now).
I hope you find relief from your apparent psychosis someday.
What difference has he made? One folksy town hall mentioning Brooklyn 40 times (Brooklyn doesn't even rate getting own hearing office), a mention of Joe Namath (Baltimore employees must love hearing that), and underlings mailing out snippy or Orwellian replies to the questions submitted before the town hall.
Morale is lower than ever. Some departments are getting to telework for overtime on Sat-Sun, but aren’t allowed to during the week. They’re being told this verbally, not in writing. To do the same work that they are told they can’t do from home during the week.
It seems to be quieter as Frank is focused on unlocking the SSA Trust Funds. Working with his new CMS, DoD, and OMB buddies on getting Treasury to unlock all the Trust Funds and shift your money to the financial markets where they can take better care of it.
Was just at my local SSA office as a result of a letter concerning my earnings and had to wait over 3 hours to be seen. The lady at the window was very polite and apologized for the long wait. She was new to the job and was forced to work in the office when her office was disbanded. Between her inexperience and her computer going down caused her to seek assistance several times. She could not even find out why I received such a letter. Even with help, my issue could not be resolved in the office and had to be forwarded to the main office for resolution. She said the main office staff was reassigned and no one knows how or when my problem will be handled. It may take months and suggested calling my congressman. I just am hoping my next check is not affected. This is not how my previous office visits were handled and it looks like service has been negatively affected by the revent staff cuts. Someone needs to tell those in charge.
I heard not enough people were working the OT in the office and the work is piling up. So they will have verbal meetings with different departments and offer them weekend only telework. To get the work done. No idea why some departments get weekend overtime and others don’t. I asked what the justification was and was told it is for a “special project” or “routine workload that needs completion”. Somehow doing the very same work falls under a “routine workload that needs completion” on premium pay (Sat-Sun) to allow work from home, but it does not fall under that provision Mon-Fri, so we must come into the office.
Please call your Congressman/woman! Tell them this- we need members of the public who are unhappy with the service levels at SSA going to Congress. It’s the only way to get more staff, because this administration is hell bent on firing as many Feds as possible.
Recent developments at the FO level- expansion of an AI-powered auto-profiling pilot, where employee-specific and even claimant-and-form specific bar codes are sent with forms expected to be returned. This speeds the step of turning a scanned piece of mail into usable data, with an assigned SSN, form type, and assigned SSA employee to process it.
In theory. From our testing, when it works, it's fantastic. But there is definitely an error rate; whether that's lower than the native error rate occuring from overworked employees is debatable. The specific sheets tell the claimant to mail it to Wilkes-Barre for processing; I think centralizing mail receipt and distribution for the whole agency is a good-on-paper practice that will end up being terrible in practice. We can squash errors at the local level easily because we can guess intent behind customer submissions and re-route misprofiled forms to the proper person. Someone working on their 8000th piece of mail that day 1900 miles away from us is not gonna have that ability.
Also, they've started pushing the use of TED (nobody cares what the acronym is), their native CRM beta software. The program is powerful, finally integrating a lot of SSA's traditionally balkanized customer data at a glance for FO/TSC technicians to assist customers. However, the learning curve is steeper than it needs to be, because the GUI is absolutely terrible. If there's anywhere that SSA needs to contract out, it'd be new interfaces for all their IT products.
Anyway, any direct deposit change of any type is now blocked until you verify the claimant/payee's identity first through TED. Which sounds nifty, until you realize that "verification" literally just means opening another program and pushing a button that basically says "yeah, I saw her driver's license". It's an overstuffed reminder pop-up, essentially.
The hiring freeze has gone on long enough now that beyond the immediate effects (no new people to replace attrition), we're seeing a lingering effect: a serious hit on morale among experienced-and-ambitious frontline workers. CSRs, CS, TEs that are ready for the next step realize that there will be no path for promotion in SSA for the next several years, and are looking at the private sector (essentially what DOGE wanted in the first place). We've lost one, and several more are looking. It hurts that these are our best people; if the only people left are the unambitious seat-fillers, this office will fall flat the hell apart.
The big town hall was a wet fart. It's fair to say Bisignano does not inspire confidence among any of us. As to their promise to "answer every question you asked", a couple of people that were brave enough to send in questions (they were NOT anonymous submissions) for it got insultingly basic form letter responses from the HR lady that spent 15 minutes polishing his apple at the beginning of the broadcast.
If Bisignano wants to centralize and standardize, then his decision to kill the vHelp program and tell FO workers to bug their state/regional offices for answers is a really dumb way to start. I'm cynically expecting an AI-powered replacement to attempt it.
Getting transferred employees that know very little only slows the process to help the public. Management should set an example and call numbers. They seem to be locked in their offices having meeting after meeting.
21 comments:
Confirmed Commissioners tend to be a lot less active and productive than ACOSSes. O’Malley was an outlier. Saul is closer to the norm, historically, particularly for GOP appointees, whose general approach amounts to passive destruction while keeping a low profile to avoid angering the olds.
Did I not tell you Frank would restore order? SSA employees are delighted to have Frank at the helm. He’s a difference-maker.
You’re bored because the most powerful are well cared for. Frank gets his tax cut. ALJs still have full time telework. We in the field office are dying but are viewed as replaceable widget-makers. And the band plays on…
If you listen closely, you can hear the claims slipping between the cracks and the backlog of work not done creaking and groaning like a glacier before calving off a huge chunk.
Lot’s of activity hidden out of sight.
You might be less unhappy if you would stop deluding yourself about ALJs having full time telework (for the billionth time, ALJs have not had full time telework for about 3 years now).
I hope you find relief from your apparent psychosis someday.
Lol, okay Lee! Now pull the other one!
the sabotage goes on...the sabotage good on...
What difference has he made? One folksy town hall mentioning Brooklyn 40 times (Brooklyn doesn't even rate getting own hearing office), a mention of Joe Namath (Baltimore employees must love hearing that), and underlings mailing out snippy or Orwellian replies to the questions submitted before the town hall.
Morale is lower than ever. Some departments are getting to telework for overtime on Sat-Sun, but aren’t allowed to during the week. They’re being told this verbally, not in writing. To do the same work that they are told they can’t do from home during the week.
It seems to be quieter as Frank is focused on unlocking the SSA Trust Funds. Working with his new CMS, DoD, and OMB buddies on getting Treasury to unlock all the Trust Funds and shift your money to the financial markets where they can take better care of it.
Frank decided to remove ALL performance data from public facing web pages, which probably means the situation has not improved.
Frank can't wait to fire more people and replace them with AI. Watch what happens when AI massively fails to perform correctly!
Our situation as well. Over half of people allowed to telework while the other half forced back in and told to quit if they don’t like it.
Go to a field office and see first hand ho under staffed SSA is. Fix it Frank.
Was just at my local SSA office as a result of a letter concerning my earnings and had to wait over 3 hours to be seen. The lady at the window was very polite and apologized for the long wait. She was new to the job and was forced to work in the office when her office was disbanded. Between her inexperience and her computer going down caused her to seek assistance several times. She could not even find out why I received such a letter. Even with help, my issue could not be resolved in the office and had to be forwarded to the main office for resolution. She said the main office staff was reassigned and no one knows how or when my problem will be handled. It may take months and suggested calling my congressman. I just am hoping my next check is not affected. This is not how my previous office visits were handled and it looks like service has been negatively affected by the revent staff cuts. Someone needs to tell those in charge.
I heard not enough people were working the OT in the office and the work is piling up. So they will have verbal meetings with different departments and offer them weekend only telework. To get the work done. No idea why some departments get weekend overtime and others don’t. I asked what the justification was and was told it is for a “special project” or “routine workload that needs completion”. Somehow doing the very same work falls under a “routine workload that needs completion” on premium pay (Sat-Sun) to allow work from home, but it does not fall under that provision Mon-Fri, so we must come into the office.
Please call your Congressman/woman! Tell them this- we need members of the public who are unhappy with the service levels at SSA going to Congress. It’s the only way to get more staff, because this administration is hell bent on firing as many Feds as possible.
Recent developments at the FO level- expansion of an AI-powered auto-profiling pilot, where employee-specific and even claimant-and-form specific bar codes are sent with forms expected to be returned. This speeds the step of turning a scanned piece of mail into usable data, with an assigned SSN, form type, and assigned SSA employee to process it.
In theory. From our testing, when it works, it's fantastic. But there is definitely an error rate; whether that's lower than the native error rate occuring from overworked employees is debatable. The specific sheets tell the claimant to mail it to Wilkes-Barre for processing; I think centralizing mail receipt and distribution for the whole agency is a good-on-paper practice that will end up being terrible in practice. We can squash errors at the local level easily because we can guess intent behind customer submissions and re-route misprofiled forms to the proper person. Someone working on their 8000th piece of mail that day 1900 miles away from us is not gonna have that ability.
Also, they've started pushing the use of TED (nobody cares what the acronym is), their native CRM beta software. The program is powerful, finally integrating a lot of SSA's traditionally balkanized customer data at a glance for FO/TSC technicians to assist customers. However, the learning curve is steeper than it needs to be, because the GUI is absolutely terrible. If there's anywhere that SSA needs to contract out, it'd be new interfaces for all their IT products.
Anyway, any direct deposit change of any type is now blocked until you verify the claimant/payee's identity first through TED. Which sounds nifty, until you realize that "verification" literally just means opening another program and pushing a button that basically says "yeah, I saw her driver's license". It's an overstuffed reminder pop-up, essentially.
The hiring freeze has gone on long enough now that beyond the immediate effects (no new people to replace attrition), we're seeing a lingering effect: a serious hit on morale among experienced-and-ambitious frontline workers. CSRs, CS, TEs that are ready for the next step realize that there will be no path for promotion in SSA for the next several years, and are looking at the private sector (essentially what DOGE wanted in the first place). We've lost one, and several more are looking. It hurts that these are our best people; if the only people left are the unambitious seat-fillers, this office will fall flat the hell apart.
The big town hall was a wet fart. It's fair to say Bisignano does not inspire confidence among any of us. As to their promise to "answer every question you asked", a couple of people that were brave enough to send in questions (they were NOT anonymous submissions) for it got insultingly basic form letter responses from the HR lady that spent 15 minutes polishing his apple at the beginning of the broadcast.
If Bisignano wants to centralize and standardize, then his decision to kill the vHelp program and tell FO workers to bug their state/regional offices for answers is a really dumb way to start. I'm cynically expecting an AI-powered replacement to attempt it.
Field Offices need support now. In a few days it may be too late.
Getting transferred employees that know very little only slows the process to help the public. Management should set an example and call numbers. They seem to be locked in their offices having meeting after meeting.
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