Two Astrue Broadcast E-Mail Messages Today

From this morning:

A Message To All SSA And DDS Employees

Subject: New Homepage

Since my first day as Commissioner, I have said that the “public face” of our Internet site, our homepage, was good but could be even better. That is why over the past months, I have been working closely with the Office of Communications to develop a new version.

Today, I’m pleased to unveil the newly redesigned Social Security Online homepage. It’s more welcoming and user-friendly. The new look of our homepage follows the standard for design principles in the industry by reducing clutter, improving navigation, making better use of graphics, reducing the need to scroll down and prioritizing items on the page.

During the design phase, I insisted we direct visitors’ attention to the information and online services that can best reduce the number of unnecessary trips to a local Social Security office. As a result, links to Filing Online for Retirement Benefits, Applying for Disability Benefits and Requesting a Social Security Card are all located front and center on the new homepage. For the first time, people also can watch a brief video greeting on the site delivered by one of our agency employees, which will help many people, including those with certain visual disabilities.

While the look of our homepage has changed, the web addresses have not. Favorite sites that you and other frequent visitors have bookmarked will not change.

Please take a minute to get familiar with our new public face. See how easy it is to use at www.socialsecurity.gov.

If you have comments or suggestions, E-mail them to new.homepage@ssa.gov.

Stay tuned for more improvements to our website, including the addition of the new online Retirement Estimator, by the end of July.

Michael J. Astrue

Commissioner

And from this afternoon:

A Message To All SSA And DDS Employees

Subject: Midwest Flooding

While many of us watched the massive flooding in the Midwest on television, many of our colleagues have been living with it. Several offices, including Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Burlington, Davenport and Des Moines, were affected in Iowa; others were threatened in Kansas.

Even though several SSA and DDS offices were in the path of destruction, all came out of it unscathed. Another high point—all of our employees are reportedly accounted for and safe. Personal damage is limited to water in some employees’ basements.

Today’s news out of Cedar Rapids is encouraging with the office reopened and the water rapidly receding. Our office is undamaged, but had to be closed last Friday, because routes to the office were closed, with the river cresting at 31 feet (flood stage is at 12 feet).

Meanwhile in Iowa City, the Iowa River has crested. At its highest point, the river reached within a block of the federal building where our office is located. On Friday, local employees rushed to handle Monday’s and Tuesday’s appointments in advance of the river’s rise. Other Iowa offices are safe.

Employees in the Iowa DDS evacuated last Tuesday, and computers were moved to keep them safe. The building was spared, and DDS employees are beginning to move back in today. We expect full operations by the end of the week.

In addition to the flooding in the Midwest, Manhattan, Kansas suffered a damaging tornado, which touched down less than two miles from our office. Our office and employees, however, came out of it safe and sound.

So, let’s take a minute today to count our blessings and remember our co-workers who are dealing with so much disruption.

Michael J. Astrue

Commissioner

"Hidden Workloads"

From a June 13, 2008 letter from the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, to Linda McMahon, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations (emphasis added):

In the last two months, NCSSMA has asked our members their opinions twice on the state of operations in their offices. ...

A myriad of workloads that do not appear on any of our many lists and databases were reported as “hidden” workloads. [And NCSSMA gives a list of 46 such types of "hidden workloads", including] ...

4. Congressional inquiries ...

5. Death Reports received from funeral homes (721s)
6. Direct Deposit requests or changes received by fax or mail (1199s)
7. Email—reading and/or responding
8. Explanations for overpayments and notices ...

11. Fraud referrals ...

30. Rep. Payee misuse allegations ...

39. Training employees
40. Unanswered telephone calls
41. Voicemail messages ...

There are a number of workloads that are not being done timely and some are not being done at all. [And NCSSMA gives a list of 30 such types of workloads that are either not being done at all or not being done timely, including.] ...

8. Earnings corrections ...

15. Overpayments in the Field Offices and Program Service Centers including waivers and personal conferences ...

19. Representative payee accountings and exceptions ...

Perhaps the greatest opportunity cost is the mounting cost from medical CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews] and SSI redeterminations that have not been done in recent years. The deferral of this work has certainly been useful in responding to the short-term challenges that field offices are facing and perhaps to address workloads that would otherwise remain hidden. The grim reality, however, is that the cost of delaying these workloads is one that still must be dealt with. ... These deferrals will ultimately produce a new volume of work that will need to be processed in addition to the mounting overpayments that will be a direct result of deferring this work ...

The competing objectives of production and quality are a common and very real dilemma that FO/TSC [Field Office/Teleservice Center] managers face on a daily basis. ... As one manager stated, “However, we can only speculate how much and how often interviewers ignore information or shape it to fit within the responses available in the system. Workload shortcuts most common are ignoring more complicated or involved responses to questions that would require development. Who is to know if the applicant was vague in a response or wanted to check on an answer when the easiest thing for the CR to do is answer “no” and ignore any potential issue or delay claims processing waiting for evidence?” ...

Field managers spend much of their time answering the telephones that would otherwise continue ringing and working the reception area to keep waiting times down. We get monthly, weekly, and daily reports related to productivity; but rarely do we hear when our quality reviews are not getting done or our training schedule is inadequate. The agency priorities are clear to us. Quality is indeed a “hidden workload.” Any change in that organizational culture must come from the top down, but it must be accompanied by a strong dose of reality and a clearer understanding of realistic expectations.

Costs Of E-Verify

From Federal Computer Week:

The House has begun to debate the effectiveness of the Homeland Security Department’s electronic employment eligibility verification system, E-Verify. Some lawmakers are considering making it mandatory for all employers while others are pushing for an alternate system ... A report from the Government Accountability Office released today estimates that a mandatory E-Verify program would cost about $765 million from fiscal 2009 through 2012 to verify only new employees and $838 million to verify new and existing employees in the same period. In addition, SSA has estimated that a mandatory program would cost $281 million for fiscal 2009 to 2013 and require an additional 2,325 employees.

Results Of Last Week's Unscientific Poll

One person wondered why they saw an ad for one Presidential candidate when they registered their vote in this poll. The reason is that I am cheap. The online provider that I used for the polling services provides it either for free or for a charge. Since I am cheap, I use the free service. But we know there is no free lunch. The "price" of the free service is advertising. Usually, the ad has nothing to do with the poll and is mostly ignored. One of the presidential candidates happened to be advertising on this polling service at the time the questioner voted in the poll, which may have seemed a bit startling, but I had nothing to do with the placement of the ad. Interestingly, when I went to retrieve the poll results this morning, the ad that came up was for the other Presidential candidate!

If the election were held today, who would get your vote for President of the United States?

Robert Barr, Libertarian Party (10)	7%
John McCain, Republican Party (37)	27%
Ralph Nader, Independent (2)	1%
Barack Obama, Democratic Party (89)	64%

Total Votes: 138

I Wish There Were More Of These

From the Texarkana Gazette:

The Social Security Administration will present a seminar on work and disability Thursday at the Texarkana Public Library.

The seminar will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the library at 600 West Third Street, Texarkana, Texas.

Anyone with questions can contact Lisa McBay, SSA claims representative at 903-792-3818 ext. 231 or by e-mail at lisamcbay@ssa.gov.

It seems to me that policymakers in Washington and Baltimore cannot grasp that work incentives for disabled people do no good unless the public understands how they work. This sort of public outreach effort is desperately needed since the work incentives we have are so complex, but staffing is so short at Social Security offices that there is little of it.

2007 Technical Panel Report

This is definitely the "wonk zone."

The Social Security Advisory Board has finally released a report that it received last year from a technical panel it assembled to review the Social Security Administration's actuarial projections.

The report's "executive summary" needs an executive summary of its own, but as anyone familiar with Social Security's highly regarded actuarial operations would expect, there is no real criticism in the report.

Stats By Congressional District

The Social Security Administration has released a set of statistics by Congressional District.

Social Security On The Campaign Trail

From the Associated Press:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on Friday called for higher payroll taxes on wage-earners making more than $250,000 annually, a step that would affect the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans.

The presidential candidate told senior citizens in Ohio that it is unfair for middle-class earners to pay the Social Security tax "on every dime they make," while millionaires and billionaires pay it on only "a very small percentage of their income."

The 6.2 percent payroll tax is now applied to all wages up to $102,000 a year, which covers the entire amount for most Americans. Under Obama's plan, the tax would not apply to wages between that amount and $250,000. But all annual salaries above the quarter-million-dollar amount would be taxed under his plan, Obama said.

Obama also said his rival, John McCain, has indicated in the past he was willing to consider higher payroll taxes.

But Douglas Holz-Eakin, the Republican candidate's senior economic policy adviser, said that as president, McCain would not consider an increase "under any imagineable circumstance." ...

McCain, campaigning Friday in New Jersey, said Obama was misrepresenting his position.

"I will not privatize Social Security," he said. "But I would like for younger workers, younger workers only, to have an opportunity to take a few of their tax dollars, a few of theirs, and maybe put it into an account with their name on it. That's their money."

He told reporters later on his campaign bus: "Private savings accounts have to be voluntary, they have to be only for young people, and they can't be the centerpiece of the argument. We have to solve this problem and not worry about private savings accounts, because even though I support them, I don't think it's central to the issue. Central to the issue is that the system is going broke. Of course I'm not for privatization. But I do think young workers ought to have some options."

Current retirees would not lose any benefits, McCain said.