I'm not sure that I heard of the CASES (Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituents) Act until I saw a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. CASES requires federal agencies to "accept electronic identity proofing and authentication processes for individuals to consent to gaining personal access to, or the disclosure of, an individual’s records in possession of a federal agency to another party" and to "create templates for electronic consent and access forms and require posting of the templates on agency websites" and to "accept the electronic consent and access forms."
Apparently, a major impetus for this legislation is the problems that Congressional offices themselves have in providing constitutent services. They want to be able to access agency records directly. However, the language isn't limited to Congressional offices. Social Security claimants should be able to access their own records as well as their attorneys.
Social Security seems to be wildly out of compliance with CASES and making little, if any, progress to compliance. Yes, claimants can establish electronic access to something that Social Security calls their file but that access is extremely limited. For instance, claimants can find out that an Administrative Law Judge has made a decision in their case but they cannot access the decision. They can find out that their disability claim is pending at the initial level but they cannot see what is going on other than a totally meaningless percentage that purports to show how far along their case is. Telling a claimant that their case is 55% of the way to a decision is giving them meaningless and misleading information. It doesn’t work like that. Claimants can't access the medical records in their case. Yes, attorneys can get better access to their clients' files but the attorney electronic consent and access form has so many problems that it's seldom used. If the e-1696 is submitted, the agency still contacts the claimant by telephone to make sure they really did appoint an attorney and they must still laboriously enter the information in Social Security's data systems, processes that can literally take months. Even after that, attorneys still don't get much access to their clients' files other than at the hearing and Appeals Council levels. We certainly cannot access information on what is going on at the black holes called payment centers.
