From The Hill:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is asking Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Frank Bisignano to provide additional information about the wait times for phone calls, amid reports of discrepancies in data.
In a letter sent Sunday evening to Bisignano, provided exclusively to The Hill, Warren followed up on her meeting with the SSA chief last Wednesday, when, the senator said, she secured a commitment from Bisignano “that SSA would undergo a public audit by the Inspector General regarding your phone call wait time data reporting and that you would publish additional wait time data.” …
She asked Bisignano to provide data by Aug. 11, including on the total number of calls received; details about the calls taken by an artificial intelligence tool — including the percentage of calls dropped, transferred, or ended without resolving the issue; the same details about the calls taken by a human customer service representative. …
12 comments:
So her concerns amount to #800 wait times and Trumpist propaganda? *SNORE*
Note to self: RIF all OIG Staff. Blame DOGE
I'm soooo unconcerned with wait times at the moment. How about they start re-staffing SSA to make it work properly?!?! They need to quit asking about crap and DO something, The Senators and Representatives of the US are the ones tanking SSA by just sitting there! Stand up to Trump, tell him this is wrong... do SOMETHING. Don't just inquire about wait times... My eyes just rolled out my 7th story window, I must go retrieve them. Seems to be a thing lately. d>:-/
Sadly, the 800# is the easily relatable element of SSA services that will improve at the expense of other workloads. I commend Sen. Warren's interest to get a better grasp of SSA and its services. Will the interest continue once phones are answered timely again.
Wait till they see work cdr #s and how badly the agency is screwing those over who are working by not getting these done timely.
Can we talk about the worthless calls and the people who call 10 times a day because they don’t like the responses? Why are these calls prioritized over important workloads.
Yes--Congress should make it clear that when people are overpaid due to SSA's delay in processing earnings reports, they support SSA waiving collection. They could amend Section 223(i)(4)(A)(ii) of the Act by replacing "twelfth" with a bigger number so that people who get terminated retroactively long after they report the earnings can still apply for expedited reinstatement for when they stopped working and avoid/reduce overpayments. This would also be a really good time for Congress to extend provisional benefits after EXR requests longer than 6 months, so nobody who tried to work goes without benefits. They could extend presumptive disability payments too since initial SSI determinations are taking so long.
Bingo! That's the problem with this supposed first point of contact service by prioritizing the 800#. It's the opposite of first point of contact service. Every call that goes to someone that can't answer a question is leading us further from first point of contact service. First point of contact service only happens when calling or stopping in to the office of jurisdiction. Anybody else tends to speak in generalities and says, "we can set you up for an appointment.". That's not very productive. Why not cut out the middle man and allow people to deal direct with the FO.
Amen
Too bad that staff is gone - so even if it was approved, it would never be implemented in policy. Instead the burden will continue to fall to the bene.
Members of Congress say that the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the sizes of federal agencies are preventing them from helping their constituents.
In July 23 letters to the IRS and Social Security Administration, more than 50 House Democrats reported that their staffers assisting members of the public with matters like tax refunds and Social Security payments are receiving “bounce-back emails and no-replies from [agency] legislative liaison offices that were previously responsive to congressional inquiries.”
“Trump and [the Department of Government Efficiency’s] layoffs are affecting more than just the federal workforce — they have delayed millions of dollars in casework requests for our constituents,” said Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., who spearheaded the letters, in a statement. “These critical services have become collateral damage in Trump’s careless mission to destroy our federal agencies and decimate their workforce.”
The congressional Democrats requested that the IRS and SSA, by July 31, provide them with their reduction in force and reorganization plans as well as the number of employees at the agencies who worked with congressional offices on constituent casework who have left government service.
Republican members of Congress have constituent services people too. They should also be contacted and included in the complaints to the Commissioner.
Ridiculously poor service is a bipartisan issue and should not be allowed to be thought of as one.
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