First Group of Board Certified Specialists in Social Security Disability Advocacy

According to a handout available at the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) meeting in Boston, the National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) has certified the first group of specialists in Social Security Disability Advocacy. NBTA certifications of specialization are accepted in some, but not all states.

Here is the list of those who have recently been certified by NBTA as Social Security Disability Advocacy specialists:

• William T. Coplin, Jr, Demopolis, Alabama
• Terry LaPorte, San Jose, California
• Donna M. Lefebvre, Knoxville, Tennessee
• David J. Linden, Napa, California
• Kenneth A. Miller, Knoxville, Tennessee

Do Employee Buy-Outs Make Sense?

Social Security and other federal agencies are now "buying-out" many of their long time employees, that is offering them incentives to retire. The effect is to reduce the average experience level of Social Security employees. SSA and other agencies have explained employee buy-outs by saying that the government can save money by replacing these older employees who have high salaries with younger employees who receive lower salaries. The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) is questioning this logic. The notes of a recent meeting of the NCSSMA board contain this interesting statement:

Our research shows that the benefit costs for new employees are much higher for new employees under FERS [Federal Employees Retirement System, which covers all federal employees first hired beginning in 1987] than the CSRS [Civil Service Retirement System, which only covers federal employees who started their government careers before 1987] employees they are replacing. The difference is 15.4% if you include matching the 5% thrift contribution. The question was raised why we offer early outs if it costs the agency more to do so. Linda McMahon [SSA Deputy Commissioner for Operations] responded that she likes to give this opportunity to people who want to leave to do so. It also gives the agency the opportunity to bring in fresh perspectives and new energy with new hires.

Social Security CLE Live Webcast

Stetson University Law School's Social Security CLE on May 19 and 20 is now set for live webcast.

Status of EDIB

Martin Gerry, Deputy Commisioner for Disability and Income Security Programs at SSA, submitted a statement for the record for a hearing before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Ways and Means Committee on the usage of technology to improve public benefits administration. Here is what he had to say about the status of the implementation of EDIB (and he did refer to it as EDIB, rather than AEDIB, removing the word "accelerated" from the name):

This year, I expect each of the DDSs and OHA to be using electronic disability folders on a regular basis, and I expect all 50 states to be fully IDA certified [fully able to function independently using EDIB] by the end of calendar year 2006. The President’s FY 2007 administrative budget of $9.496 billion for SSA would provide the resources to allow SSA to make the necessary technological investments in eDib to maintain service levels and continue to improve the way we do business in the disability process.

Inspector General Gives SSA Good Marks on "Independence Day"

"Independence Day" is what SSA is calling the day they certify a state agency as having made a full transition to the Electronic Folder (EF), used in EDIB. The process of assessing a state's readiness for Independence Day is being called the Independence Day Assessment (IDA). SSA's Inspector General has issued a report giving SSA on the IDA process.

SSA Donating Computers

The Social Security office in Madison, OH is donating 31 used computers and 6 laser printers to the local school district, according to the Mansfield News Journal. This can be taken as a sign of technological progress at SSA, since it was not long ago that any computer equipment that SSA was disposing of would have more properly belonged in a museum of computer history.

Martin Gerry at NOSSCR Conference

Martin Gerry, who is effectively Jo Anne Barnhart's right hand man at SSA, and the one who has overall charge of her plan to transform the disability adjudication process at SSA spoke today at the NOSSCR Conference in Boston. His remarks were mostly an explanation of the current plan. I noted nothing in his prepared remarks that would surprise anyone who has kept up with recent events at SSA.

Gerry was kind enough to take questions. I posed a question to him that went something like this: "A few years ago some very smart and very well meaning Social Security officials developed a plan that they thought would lead to dramatic improvements in Social Security's hearings process. They called their plan Hearing Process Improvement or HPI. There were early trials which showed problems with HPI. Despite these problems, SSA went rapidly forward into national implementation of HPI and the result was a disaster, with dramatic increases in the length of time it takes to get a hearing at Social Security. Can you assure us that you will not go forward with implementation of your plan in other regions unless and until you can demonstrate in Region I that the plan is making things better?"

There are a couple of possible simple answers to the question: "We definitely won't go forward with implementation outside Region I until we can demonstrate success in Region I" or "We're so sure this will work that we're going to procede rapidly with national implementation regardless of what happens in Region I." Gerry did not give either of these simple answers. Others may characterize what he said and it will be possible to buy a tape of what he said. What I heard was Mr. Gerry talking for some length of time without ever giving anything close to an answer to the question, which, unfortunately, suggests that Gerry and Barnhart intend to go ahead with implementation regardless, or at least that they cannot imagine failure. To be fair to Gerry, later, in response to another questioner, he came back to the question which I raised by saying that he could not imagine going forward with the plan if the number of civil actions in Region I were to dramatically increase. However, that answer is not completely reassuring since the plan is to implement this in a very different way in Region I than would be the case nationally. The plan is to have the Disability Review Board review 100% of all ALJ decisions in Region I during the trial. That would not be possible nationally. A dramatic increase in civil actions is unlikely during the trial because the replacement for the Appeals Council, the Disability Review Board, would be reviewing all decisions in much the same way that all cases are now reviewed by the Appeals Council before a civil action is possible.

International Social Security Report

The U.S. Social Security Administration has released a report on Social Security programs in the Americas.