"Truth, Justice and the American People" -- I'm Not Being Sarcastic -- Read To The End

From: |||ODAR ODC

Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 3:00 PM

Subject: Deputy Commissioner Broadcast for June

Deputy Commissioner Broadcast
Date: June 5, 2009

Subject: Disability Hearings Backlog Continues to Go Down

Incredible job, everyone. This is the fifth consecutive month that our pending has declined. Each of you is to be commended for your commitment to work down the disability hearings backlog. Your hard work and dedication are improving the lives of many Americans who are in dire need.

State of the Disability Backlog

Again in May, we exceeded our disposition target and continued to reduce the pending. We are now at 750,601 cases – a drop in the disability backlog of 5,506 cases. Our pending is currently at 10,212 cases below the fiscal year (FY) 2009 opening pending, and we are 3,999 cases below our end of the fiscal year goal.

Processing Time

Our processing time remained at 505 days in May. The fiscal year to date processing time is 494 days – 22 days below the revised fiscal year target of 516 days.

Moving Off the Low Performing Hearing Office List

Congratulations to the Seattle and Oklahoma City hearing offices for their increased productivity and hard work.

Hiring Update

By the end of the FY 2009, I expect that we will have hired an additional 959 new staff – over and above the hiring we do for attrition.

Earlier this year, we hired 140 new staff.

For the 710 new hires that we are presently working on, we have commitments from 88% of those we have made offers to and approximately 70% are already working in offices nationwide. All the Regions are stepping up to the plate to make the June 30 deadline.

Recently, the Commissioner gave us permission to hire an additional 109 new staff – 36 in the Regions and the remainder in Falls Church.

We have made 151 offers to new ALJs and hope to soon hire an additional 6. In October, we hope to hire an additional 25-50 new ALJs. Also, of great importance to our efforts to work down the disability backlog, is our ability to hire 208 new ALJs in FY 2010. We are working with OPM to get the ALJ register refreshed as soon as possible.

New ODAR Offices

We expect the offices to be completed and ready for occupancy by September 2010. Headquarters and the Regions are working well together to make this happen.

Hearing Offices

Akron,OH Madison,WI Tallahassee, FL

Auburn,WA Mt. Pleasant, MI Toledo, OH

Covington,GA Phoenix,AZ Topeka, KS

Fayetteville,NC St. Petersburg, FL Valparaiso, IN

Livonia, MI

Satellite Offices Office Expansions

Anchorage,AK Las Vegas, NV

Boise, ID Rochester, NY (satellite office)

Fort Myers, FL Sioux Falls, SD (satellite office)

Harlingen, TX

We are still working with the Regions to find space for all the centralized units.

Senate Finance Committee Hearing

The Senate Finance Committee hearing, originally scheduled for May 19, was postponed.

National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives (NOSSCR)

In mid-May, I spoke to NOSSCR at their conference in Washington, DC, and shared with them a list of best practices for claimants’ representatives compiled from people in the Regions. They are posted at http://odar.ba.ssa.gov/odarweb/ocalj/Best_Practices.htm.

Disability Determination Services (DDS) Forum

The SSA/DDS Forum convened in Detroit last month was the first such national meeting to focus on the DDS/ODAR relationship. I have asked Robbie Watts, my Senior Advisor, to find ways to improve the relationship between ODAR and the DDSs.

Good Discussions with Unions

I have now personally met with representatives from each of the unions and our discussions have been very constructive.

Also, I have shared ODAR’s current Service Delivery Plan with them and intend to post the document to the Intranet in the near future, so all can see.

CD Burning Initiative

We are working with the Office of Systems to identify alternatives to the current CD burning process, which has caused many of our systems performance issues. We expect to implement the CD burning initiative in the 2^nd quarter of FY 2010. I had hoped that we would have been able to move faster on this initiative.

I am committed to providing the information and resources necessary for you to carry out our mission. Thank you for your hard work and dedication. We should be very proud of our efforts to date. However, there still remains much to be accomplished.

David V. Foster

Deputy Commissioner

"Truth, Justice and the American People"

Way Off Topic

This has nothing to do with Social Security and is way off topic, but it does involve the intersection of two subjects that interest me -- the law and college sports. Take a look at this article about Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Is it conceivable that Justice Thomas was involved in an NCAA recruiting violation unknowingly -- or worse, intentionally? If any of you are in the same category as myself -- a contributor to a college athletic fund -- you have been told firmly not to do anything like what Justice Thomas did.

Things Not Looking So Good For ABT

From a September 2008 report of the Government Accountability Office:

Over the last decade, SSA has initiated 14 demonstration projects under its authority to test possible DI [Disability Insurance] and SSI [Supplemental Security Income] policy and program changes; however, these projects have yielded limited information for influencing program and policy decisions. Of the 14 projects, SSA has completed 4, cancelled 5, and had 5 projects in progress as of June 2008. In total, SSA spent about $155 million on its projects as of April 2008, and officials anticipate spending another $220 million in the coming years on those projects currently under way. Yet, these projects have yielded limited information on the impacts of the program and policy changes they were testing. ...

From a Presolicitation notice just posted by Social Security on FedBizOpps:

As part of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999, Congress mandated the SSA conduct a demonstration project testing a program under which Title II disability benefits are reduced, or offset, $1 for $2 above a specific amount of earnings. SSA moved forward with this Congressional mandate by competitively awarding design contract number SS00-04-60110 in 2004. This contract stated that upon successful completion of a design, SSA would award an Implementation and Evaluation contract to the design contractor on a sole source basis. Contract #SS00-04-60110 ended in September 2008 and SSA is ready to implement and evaluate the $1 for $2 demonstration project.

We have now concluded that “successful completion of the previous contract” does not meet any of the exceptions in the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA). Additionally, the President issued a Memorandum on March 4, 2009 directing Executive Agencies to make every effort to use a competitive process for contract awards. We have thus determined that a sole source contract award based upon previous contract performance is no longer appropriate. For all of these reasons, we will award the Implementation and Evaluation contract through a competitive procurement process.

ABT Associates had the BOND contract. Social Security's Inspector General has been critical of ABT's performance on this contract.

Instructions On Those $250 Payments

You might think that by now all of the $250 economic stimulus payments to Social Security beneficiaries have been paid. Wrong. Claimants are still becoming newly eligible for those payments as they are retroactively approved for benefits during the appropriate time period. The vast majority of these are disabled individuals who delayed in filing claims or had to wait for Social Security to adjudicate their cases. Those claimants can become eligible for $250 payments through the end of next year. Social Security has issued staff instructions saying that these payments will not be made at the same time as the back benefit payments to the claimants. They will be batched and paid every three months as separate payments.

Also, some recipients just do not want their $250 economic recovery payments. Social Security has also issued staff instructions for dealing with those folks. Basically, they say to tell the claimant to please take the money and then make a gift to the federal government but there are also instructions for claimants who return their checks.

Oregonian Wins Award

The Oregonian newspaper has won an award for the series of articles it ran last year on the terrible backlogs at Social Security.

Furloughs At Hawaii DDS

Hawaii is yet another state furloughing its state employees. This is described as a near 14% cut. The newspaper article does not say so, but I am told that state Disability Determination Services employees are included in the furloughs.

Overdraft Fees And Social Security

From the Los Angeles Times:

The California Supreme Court unanimously overturned a billion-dollar class-action award against Bank of America Corp. on Monday, ruling that banks can collect overdraft fees from accounts in which government benefits intended for subsistence are directly deposited.

What Does This Have To Do With The DOT?

Social Security's Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel is having a meeting on June 10 and 11. Here are a couple of items on the agenda:

• Clinical Inference in the Assessment of Mental Residual Functional Capacity -- Panel Discussion and Deliberation
• Subcommittee Chair Report – Mental/Cognitive Panel Discussion and Deliberation

I thought this panel was supposed to work on a replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), which has been used to determine whether alternative work exists that an impaired individual can perform when he or she is unable to perform past relevant work. What do these topics have to do with replacing the DOT? Do we have mission creep here? Do we have a panel working towards an entirely new method of determining disability?