Social Security’s Office of Hearings Operations is now officially just “Hearings” according to a new memo. “Hearings” is divided into five “hubs.” These names sound like they’re trying too hard to sound new and different. Anyway, here are the heads of these “hubs”:
• Hope Grunberg, currently a National Hearing Center Administrative Law Judge, is now the Head of Hearings Hub A.
• Tanya Garrian, currently the Regional Chief Administrative Law Judge (RCALJ) for Northeast, is now the Head of Hearings Hub B.
• Michael Rodriguez, currently the RCALJ for Southeast, is now the Head of Hearings Hub C.
• Scott Kidd, currently the RCALJ for Mid-West/West, is now the Head of Hearings Hub D.
• Ray Souza, currently the RCALJ for Southwest, is now the Head of Hearings Hub E, in addition to his role as Acting Chief Administrative Law Judge
The assignment of hearing offices to the “hubs” completely scrambles geography and reason. Tucson and Queens are in the same hub. Charleston, SC and Sacramento are in another. Macon, GA and Honolulu are in another. And, dare I say it, why are ALJs in charge of Hubs? These are management positions and, on the whole, management is not what ALJs excel at. Who will handle questions about leave and such like? Who will handle it if a Hearing Office roof leaks? How will anyone have enough knowledge about local personnel to handle assigning new Hearing Office Chief ALJs?
Down the road other people will have to unscramble this mess.
Odd comment. HOCALJs have been the top of the management chain in OHO for as long as I can remember. As far as leave and a leaking roof, the HOD/HOMS/GS? Same as before?
ReplyDeleteTo your point about "new HOCALJs," there are no more HOCALJs. They're being replaced with "MALJs," which is allegedly a HOCALJ without geographical restriction, who will supervise "pods" of ALJs throughout the hub.
Good question about why are ALJ‘s in charge, since they have no particular management skillset and certainly have a tendency to protect ALJ interests rather than pursue what’s good for the public or efficiency. The same question can be posed regarding the Office of Chief ALJ for OHO, and for the position of Hearing Office Chief ALJ within each of the 160+ hearing office. They hold fewer hearings and often don’t know what they are doing in terms of policy-compliant management practices, or don’t feel bound by them. Apparently SSA feels they need a judge in order to formally address issues with other judges. Like “why are you late for work?” But it has been that way essentially since the inception of OHO. All the nitty-gritty management tasks have always been delegated away from the management judges.
ReplyDeleteThe reduction from 10 regions/hubs to 5 makes sense because then instead of having 10 Regional Chief ALJs and 10 regional management officers (the non-judges who do the real nuts and bolts regional management), along with 10 sets of employees supporting them, you have 5. The rest can go back to front line work for the public, like five more judges holding hearings, instead of the many redundant or unnecessary internal bureaucratic tasks regional office employees currently perform. The theory appears to be that the essential regional workloads can be carried out with fewer people in 5 regions with the intelligent use of software (and I’m not even referring to AI). The geographic grouping of the hubs doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but with virtual work it also is not likely to have much of an impact. It’s just a change enabled by better technology over the last few decades.
Will the disruption caused by these changes actually accomplish efficiencies? Have they pruned too severely? Who knows, but on their face these changes at least have a rational basis. At a minimum you will have freed up a few dozen employees to do frontline work, which is a concrete, not a hypothetical, benefit
Basically they realized it was too much work for four offices so they carved out a fifth. What a nightmare for fees now because if you represent claimants in say Illinois you are having to work with three different rcaljs now or hubcaljs whatever acronym they come up with instead of what used to be the one for your geographic area.
ReplyDeleteFISERV is down 70% year to date. Frank is incapable of running SSA or the IRS or anything else he has ever done. His puppets and paid PR is very good at covering up his careeer of failures.
ReplyDeleteWhy did they split some cities' hearing offices into different hubs? Phoenix, Los Angeles, and New York (downtown and Varick are in one hub; Bronx and Queens in another) all have this issue. Did they have AI divide up the hearing offices or something?
ReplyDeleteHaving done this practice for almost 40 years now, I can say that I have seen 'em come, seen 'em go. When I started, hearings were held at OHA, then came ODAR, then came OHO, and I guess, now, "H"? None of these reorgs have resulted in better or more efficient service, and they cost time and money. If SSA spent half the time they spend on reorganizing in actually adjudicating claims, our clients would be so much better off.
ReplyDelete