SSA Taking Applications For ALJ Jobs

      The Social Security Administration is advertising positions as Administrative Law Judges. They will consider only the first 1,000 applications submitted by September 11. The announcement says that “The incumbent is subordinate to and accountable to the direction and supervision of the Commissioner of Social Security.”

Recompute Of Main IT Contract

      From Washington Technology:

The Social Security Administration has formally launched the recompete of its main IT services contract for acquiring hardware and software in support of customer service functions.

CGI, Leidos and Peraton are the current primes for SSA’s Information Technology Support Services Contract awarded in 2017. Peraton inherited Northrop Grumman’s spot on the program in 2021 after acquiring the blue chip defense hardware company’s IT services unit.

SSA is planning to select up to seven companies for the ITSSC Recompete and they will go through a cybersecurity supply chain risk assessment before their awards are finalized, the agency said in a Tuesday notice to release the final solicitation.

Those assessments represent the final round of a three-phase evaluation process, where SSA will first look at non-price factors and then analyze the proposed prices.

The non-price factors include relevant experience from three example projects, subcontracting plans, technical approaches and management approaches.

The ITSSC Recompete contract covers a potential 10-year period of performance, including one initial base year and up to nine individual option years. SSA did not disclose a ceiling value in the request for proposals.

For this new iteration, SSA is pushing to expand its use of self-service and artificial intelligence technologies to give customer service agents more resources and time to handle complex claims.

SSA is also looking to ramp up its migration toward cloud-based solutions, modular system architectures, and more streamlined user experiences for customer and employees alike…..

OIG Report On Numident Data Exchanges

      Social Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on data exchange agreements affecting its Numident system. It reveals that the agency already has more than 3,400 data exchange agreements and expects to increase that number by 10% a year despite the fact that the agency already has a backlog of 1.3 billion data exchanges that haven’t been processed. OIG “recommended SSA establish processes for components to collaborate on matching criteria and enhance criteria to increase verified matches where appropriate. SSA agreed to implement our recommendations.”

     Others with more knowledge of Numident can correct me but I think Numident isn’t even all that important. It’s not used for benefit payment purposes. It’s highly unlikely that any significant numbers of ineligible benefits recipients will be discovered no matter how many data matches you process. This sounds like a report designed to appeal to President Trump’s obsession with undocumented aliens. I wonder how many of the data exchanges already underway are cost effective. The number of data exchanges already underway troubles me. There’s too many opportunities for errors that will cause unnecessary problems for people who have done nothing wrong. These databases, like Social Security’s and everyone else’s, contain errors but how important are they if the data isn’t being used for benefit payment purposes?

A Labor Day Poll

 

Scam Call Center Shut Down

      From Yahoo Finance:

A joint effort by the FBI, local police and Indian authorities has shut down a huge scam call center operation in India that saw Americans lose nearly $50 million. 

The FBI Baltimore Field Office, Montgomery County Police Department and Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office announced that they had traced scams reported by residents in Montgomery County, Maryland, to "extensive international scam call center operations in India that had been targeting Americans since 2022," according to a FBI Baltimore news release.

Suicide At NC Field Office

      From WTVD:

A man was found shot at the Social Security Administration Office in Rocky Mount [NC] on Wednesday afternoon.

The Rocky Mount Police Department responded to a report of a shooting around 1:30 p.m. at the building at 1071 Hunter Hill Road. Officers arrived and found a man suffering from a gunshot wound.

Authorities said the man died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. …

AFGE On Pay Freeze

      A press release from AFGE, the union that represents most Social Security employees:

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley today issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s decision to freeze the salaries of most federal employees next year:

“For the second year in a row, President Trump has decided to deny most federal workersa pay raise next year. This is a slap in the face to the dedicated civil servants who keep our nation running and will make it harder for federal agencies to recruit and retain essential employees.

“For years, wages for federal employees haven’t kept pace with rising costs for housing, food, utilities, and other essentials. Private-sector workers currently earn 27% more on average than federal employees doing the same job. To add insult to injury, the administration is asking for special approval to pay hundreds of employees ‘requiring an extremely high level of expertise’ up to $400,000 a year – equal to the president’s base salary – even as it denies workers a basic cost-of-living raise.

“Federal employees treat our veterans and support our military, safeguard our food and air, process retirement and disability payments for tens of millions of Americans every month, and so much more. Making sure they earn a fair wage isn’t just good for them – it’s good for the quality of government services and the people we all serve.

“Because this White House refuses to recognize the invaluable contributions our federal workers make every day, I’m calling on Congress to step up and pass the Federal Adjustment of Incomes Rates (FAIR) Act, which would provide federal employees with a much-deserved 4.1% pay raise in 2027.”

Lots Of Poor People Not Being Paid The Benefits They Are Due

      From a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

… When SSA identifies an underpayment of $1 or more, it issues the underpayment to the recipient, or an eligible survivor if the recipient is deceased, after it offsets any  outstanding overpayments, Interim Assistance reimbursements, and authorized representative fees. 

For large underpayments, employees must conduct and document a pre-payment review before they release a payment.

We identified 2 populations: Population 1 comprised 2.5 million underpayments pending on the Supplemental Security Record as of September 2024 and Population 2 comprised 2.4 million underpayments SSA paid between  

Of the 160 pending underpayments in Population 1, SSA paid 80 SSI recipients (50 percent) the underpayments they were due when required. However, SSA employees did not follow policy to ensure the SSA paid 69 recipients (43 percent) the underpayments they were due. The remaining 11 (7 percent) were incorrect underpayments that should be removed from the records.  

Additionally, of the 80 underpayments for deceased recipients in Population 1, we identified 47 underpayments, totaling $22,861, that remained on SSA’s records even though they were not payable to anyone.  

Of the 100 underpayments in Population 2, SSA paid 88 SSI recipients (88 percent) the underpayments they were due and conducted pre-payment reviews for them when required. We did not find evidence SSA employees followed policy and conducted
pre-payment reviews for the remaining 12 (12 percent) underpayments, as required. Of the 2.5 million underpayments that were pending as of September 2024, we estimate SSA did not pay 1.1 million underpayments, totaling about $291 million, that were owed to SSI recipients. …