NCSSMA Says Field Office Employees Need To Be In The Office -- And What's This About SSA Being Unable To Accept E-Signatures?

     From the written testimony of Peggy Murphy for the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) to the House Social Security Subcommittee:

... Field offices can be more responsive to the public only when employees are onsite. The current telework program in field offices makes it difficult to adjust to surges in office visitors or telephone calls while balancing appointments, scheduled and unscheduled employee leave, and back-end work. This is further complicated by having an appreciable number of field office employees continuing to work from home full-time due to personal circumstances. SSA has the technology and flexibility to consider transferring field office employees, who are unable to work in the office, to other components that can better accommodate their telework needs and limit the impact on front-line public service. We need employees in field offices who are able to work onsite and assist those who seek our help in person and to handle the multitude of workloads that are not portable. As an agency we need to be able to maintain our flexibility in the field offices so we can respond to surges from the public.

    By the way, Murphy's written testimony says that Social Security ought to accept electronic signatures. Per a White House order, they must! Social Security is mentioned by name in that order. Grace Kim, Social Security's  Deputy Commissioner for Operations, also testified that the agency couldn't yet accept electronic signatures. I don't understand this.

Senate Finance Committe Schedules Hearing On Service Delivery

      The full Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing for 10:00 AM on April 29 on Social Security During COVID: How the Pandemic Hampered Access to Benefits and Strategies for Improving Service Delivery. Here's the witness list: 

• Grace Kim, Deputy Commissioner, Operations, Social Security Administration 
• Kascadare Causeya, Program Manager, Central City Concern, Portland , OR 
• Peggy Murphy, Immediate Past President, National Council of Social Security Management Associations, Great Falls , MT 
• Tara Dawson McGuinness, Founder, Senior Advisor, New Practice Lab, New America, Washington, DC

      This hearing is a big sign that there will be considerable pressure on Social Security to reopen its field offices to the public in the next few months. To my friends who work at Social Security, get vaccinated and expect to return to the office before the end of the summer. This weird interval in our lives is drawing to a close, whether we like it or not. Once you're fully vaccinated, you're at virtually no risk from Covid-19. There's no reason to keep public services closed just to protect people who refuse to be vaccinated.

Backlogs Growing

     Rick Warshinskey, the President of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has written a blog piece on Social Security's budget situation. Here's an excerpt detailing some of the reasons the agency desperately needs more operating funds:

The PSCs [Program Service Centers, which compute and authorize payment of Social Security benefits] have nearly 3 million cases pending, of which nearly 50% are over 90 days old. Many of the visitors coming into SSA’s [Social Security Administration's] field offices are asking about cases pending in the PSCs. This is one reason why we have already had 1.34 million more visitors this fiscal year to date, compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, in the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) the number of pending cases has gone up 36 months in succession and is now at a record 1.14 million cases. An average hearing is now taking a record setting 535 days for a decision.

SSA is also expected to increase the number of medical Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs) by 250,000 (pushing the agency up to 1.1 million) next fiscal year and increase the number of SSI Redeterminations the agency completes by 300,000....

NCSSMA Newsletter

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has issued its January 2016 newsletter, which they now characterize as a blog.

NCSSMA Proposals On Comp Offset

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has been kind enough to send me a copy of their draft position paper on simplifying the workers compensation offset which is applied when a claimant receives both Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits and workers compensation at the same time. I've posted their position paper on the Social Security Perspectives blog (which I rarely use).

     I think everyone who has to deal with the workers compensation offset wishes it could be made simpler but, so far, there's been no consensus on how to do that. NCSSMA recommends either simplifying the offset by applying a uniform offset amount regardless of the amount of workers compensation benefits paid or somehow forcing reverse offsets on the states. 

     Applying a uniform offset amount would simplify matters some but it still leaves plenty of complexity. In some cases, Disability Insurance Benefits will be reduced by considerably more than the claimant is receiving in workers compensation. Probably the biggest problem is how to apply a uniform offset when a claimant receives a lump sum settlement of workers compensation benefits. Current law allows lump sum payments to be considered as spread over the claimant's remaining life expectancy. This has been a bit controversial but if the lump sum payment is for the claimant's disability over the claimant's remaining life expectancy what's wrong with spreading the lump sum amount over the remaining life expectancy? However, applying a flat rate reduction for the rest of a claimant's entire life would clearly be unfair. 

     Some states now reduce workers compensation benefits as a result of the receipt of Disability Insurance Benefits. Social Security does not apply an offset when the state has applied an offset. Current law limits the reverse offset to 15 states who had a reverse offset before a certain date in the past. This limitation could be removed but there is no way to force states to implement reverse offsets. Also, the NCSSMA plan would require a reverse offset for public disability benefits. That's applied to foreign social security benefits under contributory plans so you'd need to get every country in the world with a contributory social security scheme to adopt a reverse offset to eliminate thatt offset. Nationwide reverse offsets would cost the Disability Insurance Trust Fund a fair amount of money. International reverse offset would cost a little more. I'm pretty sure the reverse offset idea is going nowhere.

Social Security's "Very Aggressive" Goal: Answer The Phone In Less Than Twelve Minutes

     The most recent issue of the newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), a voluntary organization of Social Security management personnel, has an article on the agency's Teleservice Centers (TSCs). Some points from the piece:

• On June 10, 2014 Social Security's 800 number handled its One-Billionth call;
• As of June 2015, the TSCs had handled 49 million calls since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2014;
• The TSCs have a "very aggressive" goal of 700 seconds average speed of answer and 8% agent busy rate.

22 Minute Hold Time On 800 Number -- If They're Even Able To Answer The Phone

     Some numbers from the newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel (emphasis added):

Field Office Appointment Availability

• Beginning of FY [Fiscal Year] 2012: 74 percent of customers could get an appointment within two weeks. Less than 1 percent waited over a month for an appointment.

• End of FY 2014: 28 percent of customers could get an appointment within two weeks. 47 percent had to wait over a month for an appointment.

Field Office Waiting Times

• FY 2012: Customers waited an average of 18.8 minutes; and 4.8 percent, or 2.15 million customers, waited over an hour to be served.

• FY 2014: Customers waited an average of 28.2 minutes (50 percent increase) and 13.3 percent, or 5.42 million customers, waited over an hour to be served.

Field Office Telephone Service

• FY 2012: Busy Rate: 7.4 percent; Answer Rate: 82.9 percent

• FY 2014: Busy Rate: 20.1 percent; Answer Rate: 67.3 percent

800 Number Telephone Service

• FY 2012: Busy Rate: 4.6 percent; Time on Hold: 4 minutes, 14 seconds; Answer Rate: unavailable

• FY 2014: Busy Rate: 13.5 percent; Time on Hold: 22 minutes, 3 seconds; Answer Rate: 53.8 percent

NCSSMA Newsletter On Dramatic Decline In Service

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security's management personnel, has issued its December 2014 newsletter. Here's an excerpt from the President's Corner column:

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, the wheels started coming off [at Social Security] as FOs [Field Offices] and TSCs [Teleservice Centers] went into a deep hiring freeze, with virtually no hiring for three and a half years. In addition, in FY 2011 and FY 2013, the hours FOs were open to the public were reduced by about 23% ... All of this was occurring as demands for our services increased due to baby boomers retiring and filing for disability.

Consequently, SSA’s waiting times went up, on average 50%, to levels never before seen. The average time to get an appointment increased to a month or more, while many FOs ran out of appointments each day and calendars were often extended to the maximum of 60 days.

The agency’s telephone answering rates dropped dramatically, with many FOs below 50%. TSC answering rates also took a dramatic drop and in FY 2014, with a decreased answering rate of 54%, callers waited, on average, 22 minutes to speak with a Teleservice Service Representative (TSR). 

Fortunately, FOs and TSCs were allowed to do a substantial amount of hiring in the second half of FY 2014, replacing about half of their staffing losses. SSA’s service levels will not immediately improve because new hires must be trained and staff attrition continues. Much will depend on SSA’s ability to continue to hire as annual staffing losses neutralize hiring gains.

NCSSMA Newsletter

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) has finally posted its June 2014 newsletter online. I'll bet it was distributed to members months ago. NCSSMA is a major organization of Social Security management personnel. This issue of the newsletter contains a long interview with Kenneth Rivers, Social Security's Associate Commissioner for the Office of Telephone Services. Here's one small excerpt:

As NSBR [Network Skills Based Routing] rolls out across the nation, how will it enhance telephone service delivery for the FO [Field Office]

NSBR provides the ability to route incoming FO General Inquiry (GI) calls to other FOs within an SSA Region, before reaching the 15-min max wait time. We are nearly at 70% project completion for this effort, having installed this tool in nearly 800 FOs nationwide. NSBR has afforded us the opportunity to improve telephone service delivery by increasing call answering pools of available FO agents in neighboring offices throughout the country to assist and answer calls from the local public. To date, neighboring offices have answered over 120,000 callers, who might have otherwise walked into our FOs to receive the same exact service that they were able to receive over the phoned. Additionally, we minimize performance deterioration on our N8NN [National 800 Number Network] platform by deploying NSBR, so that FOs can assist each other. 

     Note the concern with the maximum 15 minute wait time on calls to Social Security Field Office. Apparently, that's the point at which the telephone system automatically disconnects you even if no one has talked with you. They're trying to route calls to other FOs before the callers are automatically disconnected.

Social Security Managers Think Eliminating Field Offices Would Be A Bad Idea

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associatons (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security frontline management personnel, has sent its comments to the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) on their plan to eliminate almost all Social Security's field offices by 2025. If the link given above doesn't work (it's a Scribd link and Social Security has blocked Scribd in the past) try this link.

     Here's some excerpts from the NCSSMA comments:

We do not believe this [using online, self-service delivery as Social Security's primary service channel] is a realistic achievement. In order for online services to be our primary service channel, the majority, if not all, of our services would need to be available online. The agency still has too many obstacles to overcome for this to be a reality. This may be a vision for 20-25 years from now, but not a realistic vision for 2025. ...

Online services do not work for our most vulnerable clients. The vision should take into account how we will provide service to those individuals in rural areas where access to online services is still non-existent. We have seen little change in rural area services over the last decade. What will rural areas look like in 10 years and how does the agency satisfy their needs?

In order for online self-service delivery to be feasible at any time in the future, program simplification must take place. SSA programs are very complex and require highly trained and skilled technicians. Most program simplification requires legislative action and the agency has not been overly successful in the last several years in achieving program simplification. ...

It appears SSA is following IRS down the path of very little direct service. This means the public will be potentially paying third parties to explain complex rules. ...

Much of the above [plan] would describe a vision appropriate to SSA as an organization administering the Retirement Survivors and Health Insurance (RSHI) programs. However, the reality of Disability and SSI is one of growing numbers of people who are ill-equipped to do “virtual business” with us due to language, education, physical and mental barriers, as well as programs requiring ongoing stewardship review. It would be an impressive triumph of technology and efficiency to continue to provide service with the existing workforce numbers and community-based infrastructure as this population increases. Significantly reducing our community presence and/or workforce would adversely impact the vision to deliver high quality services. ...

Congress does not support most of the reductions in our physical infrastructure now and it is unlikely this will change by 2025. ...

From a philosophical perspective, it seems that this vision plan allows technology to dictate public service instead of envisioning what public service we want and the public wants and using technology to provide that service. Technology is a tool for humanity to use as we see fit and for our purposes. We control technology; technology should not control us.

     By the way, the comments were made on an NAPA form. NCSSMA's name isn't at the top or bottom of the form but I assure you that these are NCSSMA's comments.

     Both union and front line management personnel are in agreement that this is a bad plan. How are upper Social Security managers reacting to this? What about the Regional Commissioners? What about Nancy Berryhill, the Deputy Commissioner, Operations? What about Erik Jones, the Associate Commissioner for the Office of Public Services and Operations Support? And, of course, what about the Acting Commissioner? Are they leading or just holding up a finger in the wind, figuring they'll be gone before anything is ever implemented?

NCSSMA Newsletter

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has issued its December 2012 newsletter. Much of the newsletter is devoted to NCSSMA's recent annual meeting. Mary Glenn-Croft, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations spoke at the meeting. She predicted that the agency's employees would be down to 41,258 in the current fiscal year from 48,261 in FY 2010. She must have been talking about field office personnel.

     Of interest to those who represent Social Security claimants is this resolution adopted by NCSSMA:

NCSSMA will work with the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner for Operations to advocate for the expansion of representative access to electronic folders to reduce, and eventually eliminate the need for field offices and teleservice centers to burn compact disc copies and respond to requests for disability claim status from for-profit third-party representatives.

Field Office Managers Stressed

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has released its March 2012 newsletter. Hiring is mostly frozen at Social Security. Inevitably, this causes problems since attrition is uneven. Some field offices have no employees leaving but some small offices have several employees leaving. The newsletter has an article on this problem. Some badly affected offices receive help from other components of the agency but others receive no help and struggle. One particularly interesting point is that new telephone systems in field offices allow managers to see just how bad phone service has been in their offices and to allot additional resources. This has improved field office telephone service but at a cost to other workloads. Field office managers also complain that they are forced into more production work such as answering the telephone and working at the reception window. This leaves them inadequate time for management duties and forces them into overtime to try to keep up.

Managers Worried About Administrative Budget

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has issued its June 2011 newsletter. NCSSMA is heavily focused upon Social Security's perilous administrative budget. One short quote from the newsletter describing the current budget situation: "We are 'walking on eggshells' now. It feels like we are being held together by tape and glue."

NCSSMA Newsletter

The National Council Of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has released its March 2011 newsletter. To put it mildly NCSSMA is concerned about Social Security's appropriations.

NCSSMA Newsletter

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has posted its June 2010 newsletter online. One small point that I had not heard before: Social Security has an Office of Innovation. Seriously.

What The Managers Think

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, surveys its membership each year, asking about their experiences in managing Social Security field offices. Here is their summary of this year's survey:

• QUALITY OF WORK
• 87.4% of Survey respondents reported that they receive complaints weekly from the public about the accuracy or timeliness of the work being produced.
• 82.5% of managers report that the number of quality case reviews performed in their office is insufficient to ensure an accurate and timely work product.
• 71.9% of managers considered inadequate staffing to be the first or second greatest obstacle to ensuring a timely and accurate work product from their office. 61% said that competing operational priorities was the first or second greatest obstacle.

• FIELD OFFICE TELEPHONE SERVICE
• 64.6% of Field Office managers said that their offices were able to provide prompt telephone service less than half of the time.
• Virtually all of the managers (98.1%) receive weekly complaints about telephone service provided by their office. 72.8% said they receive up to four such complaints each week.
• 67.8% of the respondents said that the increased volume of visitors walking into their office is due in moderate or very large part to the inability of their office to provide prompt telephone service. 36.5% attribute the increased walk-in traffic in large part to the limited ability to answer the phones. The cause and effect is clear. 71.7% of managers said that they frequently or very frequently reassign staff from handling phone calls to helping in the reception area to reduce waiting times.
• Field Office managers overwhelmingly (88.7%) said that more staff was the most necessary element to improve telephone service in their office. Only 5.2% said that better telephone equipment was the single greatest need.

• STAFFING
• As in recent Surveys, the need for additional staff is the most significant concern for Field Office managers. 95.5% of the managers said that they need to hire at least one more employee to provide adequate public service; 89.2% said that they need to hire at least two more employees; and 71.2% said that they need to hire at least three more employees.
• Despite 1:1 staff replacements as a result of the FY 2010 SSA budget, 42% of the respondents indicated that they were not given authority to hire in FY 2010.

Concerns From The Field

From the minutes of a conference call of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel:

• FO [Field Office] phones are still a problem and we need additional staffing for that.
• DDSs [Disability Determination Services] are releasing a lot of appeals to the FO which require back-end work.
• RZ/LI [two different types of post-eligibility reviews of Supplemental Security Income non-medical factors] goals difficult to meet.
• Walk-in visitors are very high. Waiting times are also up because resources are going to answering the phones.
• The Field is the “start and finish” of all processes, yet other components seem to be getting the staffing.
• iClaims [claims filed over the Internet] have significantly increased.
• Overall quality is a concern.
• Employees are stressed out, burned out, and in some cases don’t want to work any more OT.
• Concerns that SDW [Special Decisional Workload, a project to clear up errors in payments of benefits that have resulted in huge underpayments of benefits to claimants; SDW cases are extraordinarily complicated and time consuming and can only be undertaken by the most experienced employees and they must have extensive training] workloads will be farmed back out to the FOs.
• Cannot keep up with all the ePath [a web-based application that assists employees in completing certain SSA transactions, such as changes in mailing address, residence address, telephone number, and direct deposit] stand alone events coming from the TSCs [TeleService Centers].
• Martinez [class action lawsuit on fugitive felons] settlement and ACB [American Council of the Blind -- a class action requiring Social Security to prepare Braille notices] special notices require FO resources.
• Work CDR [Continuing Disability Review] goals and Internet goals difficult to meet.
• Staffing increases at the TSCs should focus on areas that help the Field.

News From NCSSMA

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has a new President, Joe Dirago of Newburgh, NY. The Executive Committee of NCSSMA met on September 16 with Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Linda McMahon, the Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Roger McDonnell and Associate Commissioner for OPSOS, Mark Blatchford. Here are some excerpts from NCSSMA's notes on that meeting:

• The 2010 budget is expected to be close to the Commissioner’s budget request but will not be enough to allow the agency to fill every position or complete all workloads. Resources will be directed at the high-profile workloads and where Commissioner Astrue sees the greatest need. For example, the Commissioner is looking at the decrease in public satisfaction with the 800 number. In addition, he is still concerned with the growing disability workload. ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] has added significant resources and has decreased the hearings backlogs. We will finish the year with a total of just under 800,000 initial claims pending.
• Expectations are that the 2010 budget will be passed in November or December. In the meantime, Operations will continue to work as much overtime as possible. ...
• The agency brought on 3,700 new hires in FY09. [Fiscal Year 2009, which ended September 30, 2009] PSCs [Program Service Centers] saw a 5 for 6 replacement ratio, while the ratio for the field was 1.7 to 1. Budget forecasts for 2011 won’t be known until December. ...
• Mark Blatchford stated that he has made the Regions aware that there is Congressional interest in Work CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews] and this is another workload that we need to work. There is no goal or mandate, but the Agency will be expected to report on our progress in this area at the end of year. ...
• Roger stated that the number of disability initial claims pending in DDSs has increased to around 780,000 this year. Receipts are up 14% to almost 3 million and are expected to reach 3.3 million in FY10. To address the growing volume, the increased hiring for the DDSs [Disability Determination Services] in 2009 will continue into FY10 and federal capacity for processing disability claims (in ODO [Office of Disability Operations] and ROs [Regional Offices] ) will also be enhanced. The agency is also considering policy changes and developing automation tools to streamline the medical decision process. When asked if consideration had been given to moving all DDSs from the three legacy systems currently in use to one system, Linda replied that we are moving in that direction. She also confirmed that the agency will be reinstituting the Reconsideration step in the ten Prototype states, but because of the expensive, it will be done gradually, probably beginning in Michigan. ...
• Commissioner Astrue is very concerned with the busy rate and time in queue experienced by callers and is committed to improving our 800# service. In addition to opening a new TSC i[Telecommunication Service Centers] n Jackson, Tennessee, he will likely provide 350 – 400 new hires to TSCs in FY10. Additional staffing in the TSCs has reduced the projected SPIKE hours [SPIKE hours refer to times when the PSCs cannot handle the calls they are receiving and other Social Security employees who do not normally deal with this workload have to be pressed into service] in PSCs to 291,000 in 2010, down from 325,000 in FY09.

NCSSMA Newsletter -- TSCs Grow And Change

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has issued its October 2009 newsletter, Frontline. Here are some excerpts from an article about Social Security Telecommunication Service Centers (TSCs):

In FY [Fiscal Year] 2010 the Agency will begin roll out of a new 800 number phone system called Citizen Access Routing Enterprise or CARE 2020. CARE 2020 will be an internet protocol based program designed for Web Call Back, Click to Talk, Web Chat and Web Collaboration. This will enable us to communicate with people using our internet services. ...

We will probably continue to see changes in the number and size of our TSCs in FY 2010. ... The Pittsburgh TSC has been restructured as a center with eight TSRs [Teleservice Representatives]. By the end of the year they will co-locate with a field office. Many TSCs around the country have greatly expanded. Some offices have grown by four times their size of a year or two ago! There is movement among the regions to create larger TSCs with about 200 TSRs while reducing the actual number of sites.

NCSSMA Newsletter

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has issued its April 2009 Newsletter. Among other things, the newsletter includes an interview with David Foster, the new Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR), and a piece written by a woman who went from working in Social Security field offices to working as a group supervisor at ODAR.