New FOIA Disclosures

      Social Security has uploaded a number of "proactive disclosures" to its Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) reading room. Read and enjoy.

SSI Class Action

      A class action lawsuit has been filed in the Eastern District of New York dealing with the poor service that the Social Security Administration has afforded Supplemental Security Income claimants since the pandemic began, particularly in regard to how that poor service has created or increased overpayments and the agency’s inability to cope with the overpayments other than by seizing current benefits without giving the claimants involved a reasonable opportunity to request waiver of the overpayments.

     Overall, SSI claimants and recipients have fared horribly during the pandemic. Regardless of the merits of this lawsuit, they deserve much better.

Poll

survey software

CR Passed

      Congress has passed and the President has signed a continuing resolution (CR) that allows the federal government to continue operations and spending money at the same rate as in the fiscal year that ended at midnight last night. This goes through December 3. The Social Security Administration received no special treatment in the CR.

MDW Mess

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

Objective 

To determine the effectiveness of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) controls for resolving high-priority requests sent via the modernized development worksheet (MDW) process.

Background 

Because SSA’s processing centers (PC), teleservice centers, and field offices have different processing roles and systems access, SSA employees are often required to contact other offices to request case processing assistance. Employees use MDWs, manually designated as either routine or high priority, to send requests for action to other field offices or PCs. Per SSA policy, high-priority MDW requests should be limited to situations that involve awards and disallowance of claims; start- and stop- payment actions; appeals; congressional inquiries; and public-relations issues. According to SSA’s policy, employees should follow up on unresolved high-priority requests after 20 calendar days. 

From SSA’s Processing Center Action Control System, we identified 121,376 benefit records with high- priority MDWs pending at PCs as of January 28, 2020. Of these, 82,439 (68 percent) had MDWs that were pending for at least 60 days. We reviewed a random sample of 100 benefit records with high-priority MDWs pending at least 60 days.

Findings 

SSA does not have effective controls for resolving high-priority requests sent via the MDW process. As a result, SSA made improper or delayed payments and inflated PC backlogs, which impeded efforts to improve customer service. For 51 of the 100 sampled benefit records, SSA did not resolve the high-priority MDWs or resolved them longer than 60 days after field office and teleservice center employees sent them to the PCs. ...

For the remaining 49 benefit records, employees (1) resolved the high-priority MDWs but did not clear them or (2) made incorrect inputs on MDW requests. We estimate SSA’s management information was inflated by over 40,000 high-priority MDWs, which further decreased the effectiveness of the MDW process. ...

     So much to unpack here. Note that the systems used by the payment centers, teleservice centers and field offices don't really talk with each other very well so Social Security had to come up with the MDW process but that's not really working so well. It sounds like the system has almost completely broken down if it ever worked to begin with. Even when the MDWs are "resolved", often there are errors in the "resolution." And, oh yes, note the special treatment for "public relations issues."

     This isn't a video game. Real people suffer lengthy delays in the payment of benefits owed them. Many of these problems never get resolved without frequent external pressure from attorneys representing claimants.

How Did This Get Published?

      The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has posted a "working paper" by Cody Tuttle and Riley Wilson on The Impact of Claimant Representation Fee Schedules on the Disability Applicant Process and Recipient Outcomes. Tuttle and Wilson seek to prove the hypothesis that after the maximum fee that can be charged by an attorney for representing a Social Security claimant was increased in 2002 and 2009 that attorneys delayed their clients' cases so that they could draw the now higher maximum attorney fee. The two had one big problem. While they had data showing that wait times had increased in general they didn't have data that distinguished represented from unrepresented claimants. They "solved" this problem by assuming that the overall increase in average wait times was solely due to a large increase in wait times just for unrepresented claimants with the unrepresented claimants suffering no such delays. I would call this a whopping leap of faith. The researchers noted that the country was in recession both in 2002 and 2009 and wondered whether that might have something to do with it. The possibility that things were going on specifically at Social Security that caused increased backlogs for represented and unrepresented claimants alike appears to have not occurred to them. Actually, things were going on at Social Security in both those years. You can take a look at a GAO study from 2002 and a New York Times piece from the same year on increasing backlog problems at the agency. Here are some stats from 2009 showing wild increases in backlogs in that year. You can understand why backlogs might have been increasing in those years by looking at the chart above. Click on it to view full size. Note that in 2002 and 2009 claims were increasing a lot faster than awards. Why would that be? Awards were trailing because of increased backlogs.

     How did a "working paper" this shoddy get published? Was this nonsense peer reviewed by anyone?

Blast E-Mail To SSA Employees

 From: ^Human Resources Internal Communications <Human.Resources.Internal.Communications@ssa.gov> 

Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 7:20 AM

To: ^Human Resources Internal Communications <Human.Resources.Internal.Communications@ssa.gov>

Subject: COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate

MESSAGE TO ALL SSA EMPLOYEES:

In accordance with the President’s Executive Order on Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees, all employees must be fully vaccinated (i.e., receive a single dose vaccine or the second shot of a two-dose vaccine, excluding booster shots) by November 22.  Employees must therefore have received their final vaccine dose by November 8.  Two of the three vaccines being administered in the US have two-dose regimens.  Therefore, employees will need to start vaccination by the following dates in order to be fully vaccinated by the November 22 deadline:

	Moderna	Pfizer-BioNTech	Johnson & Johnson
First Shot	Oct. 11, 2021	Oct. 18, 2021	Nov. 8, 2021
Second Shot	Nov. 8, 2021	Nov. 8, 2021	n/a
Fully Vaccinated	Nov. 22, 2021	Nov. 22, 2021	Nov. 22, 2021

All employees will be required to provide documented proof of vaccination (e.g., a copy of the record of immunization from a health care provider or pharmacy, COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card, medical records documenting the vaccination, immunization records from a public health or state immunization information system, etc.).  Employees should take steps now to schedule a vaccination if they have not already done so or preserve their proof of vaccination if already vaccinated.  Please do not email your vaccine documentation to your supervisor.  Additional instructions will follow concerning collection of your documentation.  Employees will receive duty time of up to 4 hours per vaccination shot (up to 8 hours total for two-shot vaccines) rather than administrative leave to complete the vaccination process; other policies concerning administrative leave for vaccination reactions and to take family members for vaccination will continue unchanged.

At this time, we have discontinued the SSA Vaccination Attestation survey and removed access to the survey link.   

Employees who are unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons may request a reasonable accommodation with appropriate medical evidence including showing why they cannot be vaccinated.  Employees may request a reasonable accommodation through the Reasonable Accommodation (RA) Wizard,  from their supervisor via email using SSA Form 501­, or orally and supervisors will enter the request into the RA Wizard.  Employees may also request a religious accommodation from their supervisor.  Supervisors must consult with OGC concerning religious accommodation requests.  Employees who fail to comply with the vaccination requirement by the deadline or apply for and receive an accommodation will be subject to discipline up to and including termination. 

Thank you.

Haldiman Wins Award

 

     Sylviane Haldiman,  Social Security's Associate Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Systems, has been announced as a Pathfinder award winner by Government Executive. The Pathfinder award goes to those who "bring the best information technology solutions available into the federal sphere."

Raising Full Retirement Age Is A Bad Idea

     From Are Older Workers Capable Of Working Longer by Laura D. Quinby and Gal Wettstein, published by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:

Disability-free life expectancy had been rising continuously in the United States until 2010, suggesting working longer as a solution for those financially unprepared for retirement. However, recent developments suggest improvements in working life expectancy have stalled, especially for minorities and those with less education. This paper uses data from the National Vital Statistics System, the American Community Survey, and the National Health Interview Survey to assess how recent trends in institutionalization, physical impediments to work, and mortality have affected working life expectancy for men and women age 50, by race and education.

The paper found that:

• The capacity to work to older ages is still increasing for high-education individuals and low-education Black women.
• However, no progress has been observed for low-education whites of all genders and Black men.
• As a result, large shares of those still working at age 62 will be incapable of working even two more years.

The policy implications of the findings are:

• Raising Social Security eligibility ages may reduce the financial security of large segments of the population.
• These impacts will be particularly pronounced for Black men and low-education white individuals of all genders. ...

Updated Government Shutdown Plan

      Here’s Social Security’s newly updated plan for a government shutdown. There would be no immediate disruption for the public but, still, let’s hope this doesn’t need to be used.