How Will Deputy Commissioner Be Selected?

From Alexis Simendinger at the Lost in Transition blog:

Obama transition officials are making it clear to incoming Cabinet secretaries and agency heads that they'll be handed a slate of perhaps five or six pre-screened candidates for the top jobs in their departments and encouraged to interview and hire from among those candidates. If the secretaries want to reach outside those lists to make their own hires, they will be required to justify their picks to the president-elect's top advisers, some of whom are headed for the offices of the White House Counsel and White House personnel.

What will the process be for selecting a new Deputy Commissioner for Social Security? Does Michael Astrue, a Bush appointee, get the same consideration as an Obama appointee?

By the way, the blog says the process for Obama will be much like what President Bush followed. Does this mean that Michael Astrue chose Andrew Biggs to be his Deputy Commissioner from a list of several eligibles? I find that hard to believe.

Social Security In Top Ten

The federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has released its Human Capital Survey. According to FedBlog, Social Security ranks 10th in Leadership and Knowledge Management and 7th in Job Satisfaction. Social Security did not rank in the top ten in the other six categories. Of course, there are dozens of federal agencies, so reaching top ten in any canegory is an achievement.

Furlough Of California DDS Employees?

State Disability Determination Services (DDS) offices make the determinations on Social Security disability claims at the initial and reconsideration levels. All salaries and other costs of these state DDS offices are paid by Social Security, but these are still state offices with state employees. Events that affect other state employees can affect DDS employees and complicate matters for Social Security.

The state of California has a terrible budget crisis. The governor of the state has furloughed all state employees for two days each month, beginning next month. This sort of thing has happened before in other states and almost always the DDS offices are exempted, since the state budget problems have nothing to do with the federally funded DDS. It is not clear what will happen in California this time. The governor announced that there would be no exemptions, but the Service Employees International Union is reporting that the governor's offices is saying that "certain revenue generating departments would be exempt from layoffs." I do not know whether this includes California DDS.

Can anyone at California DDS tell me what DDS employees are being told?

From A Reader Who Knows John Tanner

From BPWUSA [Business and Professional Women USA] Area 6 Representative, who knows the new Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, John Tanner:

He is my representative and has been for some time. He is a lawyer and a good one; therefore he understands legal arguments and does not appear to have forgotten the realities of practice. His son in law practices in this area and is a member of our legal services board. His constituent service people are experienced with Social Security. We do not always agree as I am more liberal than he but I appreciate that he is candid and does not overpromise on any issue. He also takes time to listen. I am on the Board of BPWUSA; I have thus lobbied him for years. He listens; he supports some of our issues and tells us when he cannot. For example, last year he voted for the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; I am expecting him to do so today. He has supported Legal Services.

Social Security Workforce Increases Slightly

Below are the September 2008 figures for the number of employees at Social Security, recently released by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), along with earlier figures for comparison purposes.

• September 2008 63,990
  
• June 2008 63,622
  
• March 2008 60,465
  
• December 2007 61,822
• September 2007 62,407
• June 2007 62,530
• March 2007 61,867
• December 2006 63,410
• September 2006 63,647
• September 2005 66,147
• September 2004 65,258
• September 2003 64,903
• September 2002 64,648
• September 2001 65,377
• September 2000 64,521
• September 1999 63,957
• September 1998 65,629

Note that even with an appropriation for Social Security for the last fiscal year that was well above the rate of inflation and that was higher than what President Bush had proposed, Social Security's workforce only increased by about 1,600 employees. It is going to take a lot of money to increase Social Security's workforce to where it needs to be.

No Kidding

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report saying that it found that the "Notices sent to denied [Social Security disability] claimants may provide inconsistent and sometimes misleading information about the evidence obtained."

This has been a problem as long as I have been involved in this field of work, which is now about 30 years. There have been many reports and Congressional hearings over the years on this issue and promises from every Social Security Commissioner, including the current one.

When clients ask me about details of these decisions, I always tell them not to bother because there are so many mistakes that a close reading of the denials is pointless. Some of what is in these decisions is, in effect, in code anyway. How would a claimant know that the use of the word "severe" is, in effect, an insult since it means that Social Security has just determined that there is essentially nothing wrong with the claimant -- that there is nothing to anything the claimant has alleged?

SSA FY 2010 Budget Request To Be $11.5 Billion? -- We Hope!

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) has released a letter that it sent President-elect Obama. The letter contains this sentence: "In communicating with you and your team at this time, our purpose is to respectfully request that, as a critical component of that support, an additional $960 million in funding be included beyond SSA’s projected budget request for $11.5 billion."

This is the first time that I have heard anything about Social Security's budget request for the 2010 Fiscal Year (FY), that begins on October 1, 2009. I hope that NADE has heard correctly on what Social Security's budget request will be. It would be wonderful to get almost a billion dollars more on top of such a request, but $11.5 billion would be a great start. The problem, even with that amount, may be how much must be spent to update Social Security's computer infrastructure, which has serious problems that raise the possibility of catastrophic failure.

Update: As I suspected, it was too good to be true. The $11.5 billion figure is what NADE and other groups want. There is no word yet on what Social Security is going to ask for.

Sounds A Bit Orwellian

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report with the title Demand for the Social Security Administration’s Electronic Data Exchanges Is Growing and Presents Future Challenges. Here is an excerpt:

Through more than 3,000 data exchanges with federal and state agencies, SSA both receives incoming data to support its own programs and provides outgoing data to support programs of other federal and state agencies. Most of these exchanges involve collecting incoming electronic data from other agencies, primarily to support the administration of Social Security benefits programs. The outgoing data from SSA to other federal and state agencies typically provide Social Security number verifications or are used to implement payment offsets in support of other agencies’ business operations. In this regard, the agency performs more than a billion transactions to verify Social Security numbers for federal and state agencies each year. To carry out these data exchanges, SSA relies on a network of electronic information systems and an infrastructure that communicates with a variety of external systems used by the agency’s partners.

SSA faces three primary challenges to supporting its existing and future data exchanges:

• meeting increasing demand for its data exchange services;
• ensuring privacy and security of data provided to its data exchange partners; and
• establishing effective practices for implementing and managing data exchanges.

Recognizing these challenges, the agency has undertaken an initiative to better manage its data exchange environment and address current and future challenges and limitations. If effectively implemented, the initiative could address the challenges GAO has described. Members of the initiative have drafted a report that includes recommendations for improving the management of its data exchanges. However, SSA has not established milestones for completing the report and acting on its recommendations. Thus, it cannot be assured that the recommendations will be addressed and implemented in a timely manner. In addition, the agency developed a summary inventory of its data exchanges to further support this initiative. However, while the inventory lists data exchanges and partners, among other things, it does not include comprehensive information on the agency’s data exchange systems, because, according to SSA officials, its purpose was only to provide summary data. Nonetheless, an inventory that provides comprehensive information on the data exchanges, such as the supporting information systems and the status of privacy and security compliance requirements, is an important tool that could help the agency make credible and timely decisions to ensure effective management of its growing data exchange environment.