Happy New Year

 

SSA Responds To Post Article

      Newsweek has an article on Social Security’s response to the story in the Washington Post on the deterioration of service at Social Security. Maybe they gave Newsweek a more substantive response that’s poorly reported but what I’m reading is no more than bluster. Why are they responding to Newsweek anyway? Everybody else rolled their eyes at the agency’s response?

Washington Post On The Deterioration Of Service At Social Security

      From the Washington Post:

The Social Security Administration — the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans — began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover.
It ends the year in turmoil. A diminished workforce has struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices — record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents and dozens of interviews.
Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath. …

At the start of September, one benefits authorizer in a processing center was called into an all-staff meeting with her colleagues, she said. There, management explained that the backlog at the time — 6 million cases — was unacceptable and that everyone would have to work overtime in an attempt to drive it down to 2 million by Christmas.

“When they told us that, everybody started laughing,” she said. “Because there is just absolutely no way to get it down in that short period of time.”  …

     There is so much more to this piece. Read it all.  It’s just the start as people start realizing there’s so much more to Social Security than answering the phones — not that the phones are answered well.

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.

Threats In Tupelo

      From the Daily Journal:

A Corinth [MS] man with a history of threatening federal employees has been charged with threatening to shoot workers at the Tupelo Social Security office.

James C. Curry Jr., 51, of Corinth, is accused of threatening employees at the Tupelo Social Security Administration office Tuesday, Dec. 16. He was arrested Monday in Lee County and taken into federal custody. He is currently incarcerated at the Lafayette County Detention Center, awaiting preliminary hearing Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court. …

I Have A Startling Admission To Make — I Love Fruitcake!

 

Although to be honest, this doesn’t look like a great one

The Day After Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

I Don't Think We Can Trust This Report

      Back in July, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked that Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) perform an audit of Social Security's reported telephone call waiting times. The audit has now been completed and a report issued -- just before Christmas. The report says that the agency's metrics were accurate which is probably technically accurate but whether those metrics are fully meaningful is another question.        

    There are at least three problems with this report. First, there is zero reason to trust OIG. It no longer enjoys any independence. It doesn't report to the Commissioner but it does report to the White House. It is now clear that there can be no OIG reports at any agency which criticize the Administration. The release of such a critical report will be blocked and those who drafted it summarily fired. (Thank you, Supreme Court.) Second, the report admits that 25 million callers to Social Security became so frustrated by Social Security's answering system that they hung up. It didn't add these callers in to the phone answering metrics. If you do add them in you find out that they comprise a whopping 40% of calls to Social Security. That's a lot of frustrated callers. Third, many of the calls were handled by Interactive Voice Response (IVR) rather than a human. How effectively did IVR respond to requests for customer service? The agency reported a big jump in telephone calls this year. How much of that was due to failed IVR? Failed IVR also contributes to customer dissatisfaction. 

     Senator Warren is already accusing the Social Security of lying.

Jollity Seem A Little Forced? You're Not Alone

 

30+ Day Wait For In-Office Appointments

      From CU-Citizen Access:

Getting an appointment at Champaign’s [Illinois] social security district office continues to take 30 days or more, but some recipients report that once they are at the office their needs are processed quickly.

Yet the wait can be frustrating and difficult.

Kiesha Jones, a Champaign resident, said she waited an hour and a half for her initial appointment at Champaign’s Social Security Office.

“They were like, we’re only taking appointments, you’ve got to call this number. I called the number and I couldn’t get through,” she said. “Once I got through, they made an appointment about 37 days out.” … 

Despite her experience, a spokesperson for the Social Security Administration said in a December email to CU-CitizenAccess that most claim appointments for disability benefits are scheduled within a month.

“The Champaign, Illinois office currently schedules the vast majority of T2 disability, SSI Blind and Disabled, and aged claim appointments within 30 days of request,” the spokesperson said.  …

Merry Christmas

 

Much Of Social Security Staying Open On 12/24 And 12/26

      Sorry guys.

Click on image to view full-size

 

Fair?

      The National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare is blaming changes made during the Trump Administration for SSA’s data systems crash last Wednesday. Is that fair? I don’t know. I do know that the agency’s data systems are at greater risk due to staffing cuts.

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

Mody Confirmed

      Arjun Mody has been confirmed as Deputy Commissioner of Social Security.

Unending Slime

      I have to say just how much it galls me that the Commissioner of Social Security is a man as deficient in character as Frank Bisignano. Within a few months of leaving his old position as CEO of Fiserv, the new company management accused him of what amounts to a “pump and dump” scheme netting him hundreds of millions of dollars. In any other Administration Bisignano would have been forced to resign. In the Trump Administration it’s just another in an unending series of stories demonstrating how slimy many of Trump’s appointees are.