$81 Million AI Contract

     From a press release:

Accenture Federal Services has won an $81 million artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI / ML) contract from the Social Security Administration (SSA). The company will deliver end-to-end back office intelligent automation services to transform the way 250 million retiree and survivors’ benefits documents are processed every year. The forms are currently being received and managed via email, mail, and fax.

The Social Security Administration has already successfully deployed an enterprise hyperautomation platform that uses advanced deep learning and computer vision techniques to identify data from the agency’s electronic folder, extract text, transcribe data with the highest level of accuracy, and speed processing through downstream business processes. The platform uses internal enterprise data to intelligently and rapidly keep pace with high demand, expedite decision making, and control costs.

Accenture Federal Services will now take this project to the next level providing the licenses necessary to deliver an end-to-end, Infrastructure as a Software (IaaS) roadmap for intelligent automation installation, testing, and training. ...

How Much Do VEs and MEs Make?

     This is from a Freedom of Information Act response that Social Security posted recently.

Social Security Ready To Start Moving To The Use Of Generative AI

     From a Request for Information published by the Social Security Administration:

SSA is looking for a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) solution capable of: 

• assisting SSA developers in developing code more expeditiously, and/or
• transforming Legacy Code to modern languages for the purpose of refactoring Legacy Systems to leverage modern technologies and platforms. ...

What's In A Name?

     Social Security is using Voicemeeter Potato to record Administrative Law Judge hearings.

What A Disaster!

     From Promoting Opportunity Demonstration: Final Evaluation Report, submitted to Social Security by Mathematica, a contractor:

...  POD [Promoting Opportunity Demonstration] was a randomized controlled trial that included two treatments of a benefit offset. The two treatment groups had the same benefit offset but different termination rules. Treatment group 1 (T1) did not face termination, but treatment group 2 (T2) faced termination after 12 consecutive months of earnings above the full offset amount (the point at which benefits were reduced to zero). ...

The key features of POD implementation included benefits counseling services and support for processing earnings adjustments, led by the implementation team, and recruitment, led by the evaluation team. ...

Approximately 30 percent of treatment group members used the POD benefit offset, with a median monthly offset amount of $351. More than 80 percent of offset users experienced a work-related overpayment or underpayment, requiring a retroactive adjustment to reconcile the difference. ...

We did not observe any statistically significant differences in outcomes between the two treatment groups for overall offset usage or the impact estimates for the primary outcomes. ...

There were limited statistically significant differences in observed outcomes for the POD treatment and control groups. There were impacts on one primary outcome (annualized SGA) and several other employment-related measures. For example, we found positive impacts on job search and use of Vocational Rehabilitation services, which might contribute to longer-term outcomes. These impacts were notable because they indicate that impacts could still emerge beyond the two-year evaluation window. ...

POD had positive net benefits for beneficiaries and net costs to SSA. The net benefits for beneficiaries were driven by increases in earnings and fringe benefits, and SSDI benefit amounts. The new costs were driven primarily by the increased benefit payments and costs for counseling services. ...

    Even with counseling, 80% of those using the offset ended up with an overpayment or underpayment! The experiment had only a limited effect on outcomes and ended up costing more money than it saved! Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

    Why can't policymakers admit the obvious? Social Security disability recipients are, for the most part, really, really sick. Everything under the sun has been tried to get them back to jobs. Nothing has worked. Nothing. The work incentive schemes just get more difficult and expensive to administer. They end up with messy results for the disability recipients who do attempt to return to work because the offsets are too complicated The schemes always end up costing more money than they save. There's no possible work incentives that will get any significant number of disability recipients back to work because they're too sick. 

    Crappy experiments like this are likely to go on forever because policymakers are blinded by their own preconceptions that it's easy to get on Social Security disability benefits and that a lot of disability recipients could work if given the right incentives. They don't bother to study the pathetic history of work incentive failure. They get sold on new schemes by contractors like Mathematica who end up getting paid even though their schemes never work. Even after this disaster this 406 page report ends with ideas for new schemes that could be tried!

Is This A Good Idea Or Just Too Intrusive?

     From a posting by Social Security on SAM.com:

This is a Request for Information (RFI). This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation or commitment by the Government.  ...

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is conducting market research to identify potential vendors capable of providing record locator services to help identify interactions between a disability claimant and the healthcare system (e.g., physician visits, hospitalizations). ...

During the application process [for Social Security disability benefits], claimants may spend a great deal of time gathering information and trying to remember dates of medical treatment and provider details.  The process relies solely on claimant recall for the names and addresses of medical providers and dates of treatment.  As such, the body of medical evidence assembled for evaluation may be incomplete and omit information that could be critical in making an accurate determination of disability. ...

Technical Requirements:

• The service shall support the ability to accurately identify a patient based on key demographic information supplied by SSA, such as patient name, date of birth, gender, address, and Social Security number.
• The service shall support the ability to provide an encounter/treatment history within a specified timeframe for an identified patient, which consists of a list of treating facilities/providers, including address information, Medical Record Number (MRN), date of encounter, and conditions that were treated or evaluated.
• The service shall support the ability to provide a list of active medications within a specified timeframe for an identified patient, including the prescription date along with the prescribing doctor, facility, and address.
• The service shall support the ability to identify the electronic address of a specific patient’s electronic medical record based on key demographic information supplied by SSA.  ...
• The service shall support the ability to notify SSA when specific patients, identified by key demographic information supplied by SSA, have had medical encounters, and provide information about the treating provider or facility, the date of the encounter, and the electronic location of where the associated electronic medical record could be found.

      I really want for Social Security to have a complete medical record on my clients. I try hard to figure out who they've seen and to help complete the record set that Social Security has. Contrary to what some would think, the problem isn't claimants trying to conceal medical sources they've seen. I don't think that's what this RFI is even about. The problem is that medical histories get complicated and claimants forget. Still, this RFI seems a bit creepy to me. Do we really want the government to have the power to troll across all medical records to find every last bit of records on an individual? To be able to construct a list of prescribed medications at any given moment? Would you want the government having this kind of power to gather your medical records?

SSA Wants Monthly Payroll Data

      From a Request for Information posted by the Social Security Administration (emphasis added):

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a need to acquire contractor services to provide an online wage verification system that SSA can use to substantiate employment, wage amounts, and other employment-related data. The SSA is seeking information on how an interested contractor could meet our requirement to establish a data exchange with payroll data providers to provide monthly wages per individual and employer data for use in SSA’s administration of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Program on a monthly basis.

Maximus Loses Ticket To Work Contract

      From Washington Technology:

Maximus has lost an incumbent contract at the Social Security Administration after the company saw its protest denied by the Government Accountability Office.

The company has held the Ticket Program Manager contract since at least 2015. But this time around, Cognosante won the contract and Maximus took its challenge to GAO. Maximus argued that the evaluation of proposals was not conducted properly.

According to the GAO protest docket, the Maximus protest was denied Aug. 6. ...

The Ticket Program Manager contract is worth $79.6 million and runs for five years. Cognosante and Maximus were the only two bidders on the contract, according to the Federal Procurement Data System. ...

But Will They Have Enough People To Answer The Phones?

     From a press release:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has chosen Verizon to provide Unified Communication (UC) and Contact Center (CC) services to more than 62,000 SSA employees at 1,300 locations through The Next Generation Telephony Project (NGTP). This project focuses on converging three existing systems to provide an enterprise-wide CC and UC solution upgrade for the SSA.

Verizon will provide a customized UC/Customer Experience platform that will help the SSA transform customer service as part of its long-term IT modernization plans. The project includes complete operational support services including management, maintenance, training, help desk, network operations center, security, recording and analytics. It also enables the SSA to analyze operations more effectively, improve customer experience and better serve the public across channels, whether in-person, video, phone or online. ...

Verizon will also play an instrumental role in replacing SSA’s national 800 number teleservice platform, which supports over 10,000 agents and field office employees who respond to citizen inquiries regarding their SSA benefits.

That's A Lot Of EEO Complaints

      From a Request for Information recently posted by Social Security:

... The Social Security Administration (SSA) is seeking a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software and modules in support of the agency’s existing Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) enterprise case management solution. ...

Social Security Administration with its 65,000 employees currently processes approximately 1,000 EEO counseling, 500 formal complaints of discrimination, 550 hearings and 300 appeals per year.  A Case Management Information System is required for collection of information on nationwide performance of SSA in counseling, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), investigation, hearings, final agency decisions, appeals and compliance. ...

Need To Have Defined Roles When You're Being Agile

      From Fed Scoop:

The Social Security Administration can avoid confusion and bottlenecks on IT modernization projects by identifying roles for contracting officials in the agile software development process, according to the Government Accountability Office.

SSA adopted an agile approach to software development — characterized by incremental or iterative improvements to software — in 2017 to help meet its modernization goals, but those projects continue to see delays due to the murky roles of contracting officials, GAO says in a new report.

While SSA issued guidance on agile team members like project owners, developers and testers, it failed to do so for contracting officers (COs) and contracting officer’s representatives (CORs) within the context of agile projects.

“SSA officials told us they did not think they needed to specify the roles given that the contractors were only responsible for providing services,” reads GAO’s report released Monday. “However, according to leading practices for agile adoption, key roles in agile IT development include the program office, product owner, contracting personnel, and development team.” ...