Why Isn't SSA A Cabinet Level Department?

I thought I would compare employment at the Social Security Administration to that of departments in the President's cabinet and to other independent agencies that have more than 10,000 employees. This is based upon figures from the Office of Personnel Management.

• Department of Defense (civilian) 668,450
• Department of VA 239,689
• Department of Homeland Security 168,635
• Department of Treasury 106,623
• Department of Justice 105,827
• Department of Agriculture 105,488
• Department of Interior 73,126
• Social Security Administration 63,647
• Department of HHS 63,506
• Department of Transportation 53,861
• Department of Commerce 40,544
• NASA 18,457
• Department of Labor 15,339
• Department of Energy 14,950
• General Services Administration 12,170
• Department of State 10,208
• Department of HUD 9,825
• Department of Education 4,344
  

So why there has been never been a serious proposal for Social Security to become a cabinet level agency -- or at least not in a very long time? It cannot be because Social Security is not a big ticket item. Social Security involves more money than any agency other than the Department of Defense. It cannot be because what Social Security does is not important to the American people. About 50 million Americans rely upon Social Security for all of part of their income. Is it because we want to keep Social Security "out of politics?" The agency was part of a cabinet department for most of its existence without any sign of obvious harm. If anything, Social Security seems to have been more "political" since it became an independent agency. I do not recall anyone like Andrew Biggs working at Social Security before it became an independent agency. Also, I do not recall any President traveling around the country trying to privatize Social Security until after it became an independent agency.

Hiring Priorities

Social Security's funding is very tight. Few vacancies will be filled between now and the end of this fiscal year. However, Social Security has advertised a few positions, which give an idea of the agency's priorities. They are currently seeking the following:

• 40 contact representatives for the teleservice centers in Albuquerque, Houston and Dallas
• Four criminal investigators to be spread around the country
• Two human resource specialists for Social Security's central offices in Woodlawn
  
• "Many" Federal Reviewing Officers

Columbus Dispatch On Backlogs

The Columbus Dispatch has an article up on backlogs at Social Security's hearing office in Columbus, Ohio. The backlogs are up to two and a half years.

Is This How Social Security Employees See Themselves?

From Tom Shoop's Fedblog:

On 24 last night, supercounterterrorist agent Jack Bauer's evil father, who is apparently behind every bad thing that has happened on the show in the past two years, cornered Jack in a warehouse. In an effort to inflict maximum anguish on his son, he told him the most hurtful thing he could come up with: that Jack had turned his back on his family to become a mere "civil servant.

Productivity Gains And Soviet Five Year Plans

Let me pick out one last item from the February 14 Social Security Subcommittee hearing. This is from the written statement prepared by Commissioner Astrue:

Since 2001, SSA has improved productivity on average by 2.5 percent per year for a cumulative improvement of 13.1 percent.

The problem with this statement is that the productivity increases talked about by Commissioner Astrue resemble the productivity increases under the old Soviet Union's five year plans. That which was being measured increased, while everything that was not being measured went to hell, making the reported productivity gains meaningless.

In the old Soviet Union, a shoe factory might be required under a five year plan to increase its productivity by, let us say, 13.1% and would meet that goal, but the shoes made would be ugly, uncomfortable to wear and so poorly constructed that they fell apart quickly, making the productivity gain meaningless. The same sort of thing is happening at Social Security. For instance, more telephone calls are answered at teleservice centers -- but the people answering the calls are under huge pressure to get the callers off the line as quickly as possible so they can meet their productivity goals, so they often fail to help the callers, leading to frustration for Social Security claimants, repeated telephone calls and more in person visits to Social Security field offices. Probably, Social Security is not measuring how completely and accurately their teleservice center employees deal with telephone inquiries and they are certainly not factoring that into their productivity figures. At Social Security's field offices appeals filed by claimants are piling up rapidly because field office personnel lack the time needed to do the data entry required to process the appeals, but no one is measuring that or factoring it into the productivity figures. If anything, delays in processing appeals at the field offices make the delays at the hearing offices look less bad than they are. In many different ways this sort of thing is happening all over Social Security. Productivity is increasing rapidly according to Social Security's official statistics, yet the error rates, which are not being measured, are going through the roof, as are the backlogs in everything that is not being measured or factored into the gross productivity numbers that Social Security reports to the world.

An Image From 1937

Staffing Problems At Field Offices

I keep going back over the witness statements at the House Social Security Subcommittee hearing last week. This is an excerpt from the statement of Rick Warsinskey of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel (the emphasis is mine):

... SSA’s total staffing including staff in our community based field offices is being cut by approximately 4,000 positions from Fiscal Year 2006 to Fiscal Year 2008. --- It is interesting to note that total Executive Branch Employment is expected to increase 2.1% from FY 2006 to FY 2008 while SSA’s employment is expected to decrease by 6.2%. ...

Last year Field Offices could only fill one out of every eight vacant positions and this year they haven’t been able to replace any of the positions they have lost. The Field Offices have seen a reduction of 2,000 positions in just the last seventeen months. This cut works out to an equivalent reduction of ninety-five Field Offices with an average office having twenty-one employees. ...

The fact that the public can’t get through to SSA on the telephone is creating an overwhelming amount of walk-in traffic in many Field Offices. Waiting times in many Field Offices are running two to three hours long. Some visitors are even experiencing wait times over four hours.

To me, this sounds like Social Security's field offices are heading rapidly towards collapse. They are already unable to answer their telephones. Despite this, their staffing is still being cut. They are rapidly becoming unable to see all of the people showing up in person or to complete vital tasks such as putting those approved for SSI on benefits, processing appeals and handling myriad other matters such as arranging representative payees for incompetent claimants.

Major Flexiplace Problem

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The confidential files of six Wisconsin residents who had sought Social Security disability benefits were lost for months, as were documents from seven other files, after a Social Security employee took them home to work on them.

In a bizarre twist, the mother of one applicant received an anonymous call in November from a man who had "very specific" information on her son's medical condition, records show.

The caller told her that his Social Security file, along with others, had been found in a downtown Milwaukee Dumpster, according to federal investigative reports.

All of the applicants had been waiting at least two years for a final decision on whether they qualify for disability benefits when their files were lost, delaying decisions even further.

The Social Security Administration allows employees nationwide to work on confidential files at home under a program called Flexiplace, which has come under fire in the past because of privacy concerns.

The employee who took the files home told authorities she believes some were left behind when she fled her home last summer because of domestic violence. She told authorities she had kept them in a locked two-drawer file cabinet.

Four of the files were never found and two others, including the one involving the phone call, were anonymously mailed back to the office in early December, said Carmen Moreno, a Social Security spokeswoman.

Documents from the seven other files also were sent back anonymously to the agency's Milwaukee office in separate packages in early December. Social Security employees are gathering medical and other information for the four files that were completely lost, Moreno said.

All of the people whose files or records were lost had applied for a hearing on their request for disability benefits in 2004, Moreno said. One had a hearing in early February and the others are still waiting to be scheduled. ...

Moreno said that employees nationwide are allowed by union contract to take files home. In Milwaukee, 38 employees may take the files home. The documents must be transported in a locked briefcase and stored in a locked safe or file cabinet in the employee's home. The files are to be logged in and out with a supervisor's approval.

"There are numerous opportunities for things to go wrong when employees take these files home, and the situation in Milwaukee appears to reflect that," said Marty Ford, co-chairwoman of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities task force on Social Security. Ford testified before a congressional committee in 2003 against the policy of allowing Social Security Administration employees to take the confidential files home.

"Even if there is total trust that the employee is not going to do anything wrong, you don't know who else is in the household. Guests? Visitors? These types of files contain incredibly personal medical information that nobody would want out in public," Ford said.