Government Executive goes through the counter-arguments against the letter that Commissioner Bisignano wrote to Senator Warren claiming that service is rapidly improving at Social Security.
I deal with Social Security. I know things aren’t going well and the future looks grim. Service is currently improving in some ways and worsening in others. The only reason service isn’t worse is the generous use of overtime. I expect there will be significantly less OT in the next fiscal year.
I know the agency has a huge problem with what I call the “Now now, not later, not ever” backlog, cases that present complications that take time to sort out, time that just doesn’t exist now. The employees are sorting out the easy cases first to create stats. The complex cases aren’t worked and under current circumstances they’re never going to be worked. They just keep piling up. I don’t think anyone is even counting them. I’m an attorney. Of course I raise complications. That’s my job. I know when the workers compensation offset is wrong. I know to ask for a protective filing date based upon a prior claim when the agency took an SSI only claim when they should have also taken a Disabled Adult Child claim. I know to point out that the agency missed a date first insured issue. I’m not the only one. Social Security employees themselves spot many of these things but have no time to act on them.
18 comments:
The FY 26 budget proposal has a pretty healthy amount of OT again, FYI.
Right from the trump playbook - if you say the lie enough times it must be true.
OT in the field offices came to a screeching halt earlier this week. Literally an "all overtime is cancelled until further notice" email in the middle of the day.
This isn’t a counter-argument. This is just O’Malley and the union contorting to make the O’Malley months seem better than they were. Kinda’ like the O’Malley PR machine that was SecurityStat.
I wish it was possible to arrange a lot of Social Security attorneys together to form a "posse" that could somehow expose the federal government get SSA on the right track. The last thing SSA wants right now is media attention. A big group of attorneys would show the entire government (if they even care) that there is a major problem. 300 Social Security attorneys standing outside the door of the capitol building would sure bring in the media and effectively, and legally point out the problems in a way that would open the eyes of the general public, and oblivious members of congress (pretty much the majority of them).
I disagree with this. As someone who is in HQ before O’Malley, SecurityStat was a great cross component initiative. Data from that was open to the public, well thought out with stakeholder involvement across the agency, rather than the hasty, top-down decision making we have now.
Leland "Whatabout" Dudek
But was there ever truly an honest discussion of the data? Or was it more a curated discussion of the data? And why did all the meetings require broadcast to an outside audience with special guests in attendance? That’s more a TV show (with one star) than a forum for career professionals to solve problems.
I'm a FO manager... Must have missed that email. Still got plenty of OT, problem is no one wants to work it. Everyone is taking more time off actually, be it for stress or to just get away from the increasing demands.
O’Malley was a terrible propagandist. Frank not good but I’ll take him any day over O’Malley. O’Malley was the beginning of the end for SSA.
I worked hundreds of hours of OT last year. This year, I’ve worked less than 16 hours. No current plans to work any more either until things change.
I like frank. Who cares that he lies, breaks stuff, and is going to torpedo the moral of the agency to even lower depths but at least he…. Yeah I got nothing.
There is an old saying that “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”. 🤐
That means your overtime days are over until the next administration.
If you think anyone in power follows that rule, you’re not paying attention.
I have nothing to say.
That’s fine. I’m not interested in giving them any more than 40 hours a week, even if it means taking a pay cut.
This GovExec journalist is a terrible writer. Could ChatGPT just file his reports for him next time?
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