I Guess Their Regular Duties Aren’t That Important
There’s a report that 500 Social Security employees are being pulled off their regular duties as Claims Specialists and Technical Experts to answer the agency’s 800 telephone number lines effective Monday.
If all Congress asks about, and all the media reports on, is the Average Speed of Answer at the Teleservice Centers, then that's all the COSS will focus on. There are a million other metrics that are crap right now (wait times at recon, effectuation of awarded benefits--especially paying past-due benefits, not just putting people into pay) and ones that I don't know if they're bad because SSA doesn't publish the stats but I'm betting have not improved (processing times for retirement and survivor claims, wait times for appointments, PSC backlogs). And that's just whether the work is getting done...not whether it's getting done right (a lot of times it isn't).
Answering the telephone calls is the headline number while processing claims is not. This is the new DOGE reality at SSA.
ReplyDeleteIf all Congress asks about, and all the media reports on, is the Average Speed of Answer at the Teleservice Centers, then that's all the COSS will focus on. There are a million other metrics that are crap right now (wait times at recon, effectuation of awarded benefits--especially paying past-due benefits, not just putting people into pay) and ones that I don't know if they're bad because SSA doesn't publish the stats but I'm betting have not improved (processing times for retirement and survivor claims, wait times for appointments, PSC backlogs). And that's just whether the work is getting done...not whether it's getting done right (a lot of times it isn't).
ReplyDelete