| Richard A. Allen Claims Representative Had 22 years of service with SSA. A Vietnam veteran, he was born in Bailey's Crossroads, Va., and won a scholarship to Panhandle State University in Goodwell, Okla. He is survived by a daughter and his mother. | |
| Saundra G. Avery Development Clerk Worked nine years for SSA. She was a native of Danville, Ark., and was active in her church. A graduate of Central State University in Edmond, Okla., Sandy is survived by her parents and a brother. | |
| Oleta C. Biddy Service Representative Worked 20 years for SSA. Oleta was born in Rosebud, Ark., and was active as a Sunday school teacher and taught children's choir at her church. She is survived by her husband, a son, two grandchildren and two sisters. | |
| Carol L. Bowers Operations Supervisor Had 33 years of service at SSA, starting as a clerk-steno in December 1961. Carol was born in Chandler, Okla., and is survived by her husband and a son. | |
| Sharon L. Chesnut Claims Representative Worked for SSA for 21 years and was an active member of her church. She was born in Oklahoma City and is survived by a daughter, her mother, a sister, a stepson and a stepdaughter. | |
| Katherine L Cregan Service Representative Had 14 years of SSA service. Kathy was a native of West Memphis, Ark. A widow, Kathy is survived by three sons and five grandchildren. | |
| Margaret E. Goodson Claims Representative Had almost 21 years of service with SSA. Margaret enjoyed motorcycling and camping trips with her husband. Other survivors include three sons, one daughter, three brothers and four grandchildren. | |
| Ethel L. Griffin Service Representative Had 19 years of service with SSA, starting as a claims clerk. She was born in Illinois, where she attended Southwest Jr. College and the College of DuPage. Ethel is survived by her husband, two children and three grandchildren. | |
| Ronald V. Harding Service Representative Had more than 30 years of government service. He served two years in the Army and also worked for the Air Force before joining SSA in 1967. A respected musician, Ron is survived by two sons, two daughters, his parents, two brothers and a sister. | |
| Raymond L. Johnson Senior Community Service Volunteer National Indian Council on Aging worker, was stationed in the Oklahoma City DO for the past six months helping with Head Start programs for Seminole children. Born in Lawton, Okla., Raymond is survived by his wife, seven children, 21 grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and a brother. | |
| Derwin W. Miller Claims Representative Worked at SSA for five years. Derwin was an Arkansas native and a member of the Army Reserve. He was hired through the Outstanding Scholar Program. He is survived by a daughter, his parents, two brothers, a sister and two grandmothers. | |
| Charlotte A. Thomas Contact Representative Had 12 years of service with SSA. She was employed previously with the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services. Charlotte is survived by a son. | |
| Michael G. Thompson Field Representative Worked for SSA for 19 years. He served in the Army for more than two years. A Vietnam veteran, he is survived by his wife, three sons, one daughter, his mother, two brothers and one sister. | |
| Robert N. Walker, Jr. Claims Representative Had 15 years of service with SSA. He served in the Army for three years. Born in Jacksonville, Fla., Bob attended the University of Florida. He is survived by his wife, one son, three stepsons, one stepdaughter and 12 grandchildren. (See in-depth story.) | |
| Julie M. Welch Claims Representative Was hired under the Outstanding Scholar Program in August 1994. Julie was a recent graduate of Marquette University and had studied abroad at the University of Madrid. She is survived by her parents, a brother and a stepbrother. | |
| William S. Williams Operations Supervisor Had 20 years of service with SSA. An Oklahoma native, he had a degree in mathematics from Oklahoma State University. Steve is survived by his wife, three daughters, his father, two sisters, one brother and two grandmothers. |
I do not see this in the Federal Register for last Wednesday.The Obama administration on Wednesday proposed rules aimed at closing a legal loophole that debt collectors have used to seize Social Security and veterans' benefits from bank accounts. ...
Federal law has long protected Social Security and veterans benefits from most creditors, with a few exceptions for child support, alimony, unpaid federal taxes and debts to other federal agencies. But creditors have been seizing the payments anyway by getting court orders to freeze and garnish bank accounts that receive the federal benefits through direct deposit. ...Under the proposed rules, banks that receive garnishment orders for their customers' accounts would be required to review the accounts to determine whether they received deposits of federal benefits in the past 60 days, and in what amount.
The goal is to give financial institutions clear rules concerning garnishment orders and a safe harbor against liability, a Treasury official said Wednesday.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $500 million to replace the National Computer Center (NCC). The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has been tasked to provide oversight for the development and implementation of the NCC replacement. As part of our oversight function, we initiated a review to evaluate the appropriateness of the site or potential sites selected for the new data center and determine whether best practices were followed in the development of the overall project plan and milestones. OIG contracted with Strategic e-Business Solutions, Inc. (SeBS) and its subcontractor, Fortress International Group, to assist with this review. ...
SeBs evaluation found that in general, the Social Security Administration (SSA) developed a highly sophisticated set of selection criteria with which to evaluate general geographic areas of consideration and prospective individual properties. The Agency’s decision criteria avoided major areas that potentially are hazardous to the operation of a data center (including both natural and man-made risks). In addition, the criteria define major site and data center construction issues that would ultimately have a significant impact on the site property to be selected. However, questions remain concerning SSA's process employed in narrowing the site properties down to a short list. In addition, the initial mandatory selection criteria applied to the geographic regions under consideration may have excluded too many locales. In particular, when developing the mandatory selection criteria, it does not appear that consideration was given to the serious fiscal impact that exclusions would have in the electrical power cost arena over the life cycle of the data center. Finally, in evaluating the telecommunications criteria concepts, SeBS found only limited information. SeBs made 25 recommendations related to site selection industry best practices. SSA agreed with 22 of 25 recommendations.This report may contain Federal procurement sensitive source selection information. The disclosure of such information is restricted by section 27 of the Procurement Integrity Act.
If you work in an agency where the number of employees has increased a little bit while the amount of work has jumped a lot, there are going to be some unhappy campers among the staff and the customers.
That's the situation at the Social Security Administration, according to several witnesses at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing Thursday.
But one witness had a different opinion, demonstrating the old maxim that where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit. If you sit in the boss's office, as does SSA Commissioner Michael J. Astrue, you can paint a considerably more optimistic view of the agency's operations than employees and independent evaluators. ...
That kind of work environment produces great stress, representative of the American Federation of Government Employees told the panel. Daniel Woosley is a social insurance specialist in the Louisville office and serves as a SWAT team reserve police officer in his county's sheriff's department.
"Working in the Louisville West [SSA] office is incredibly stressful," said Woosley, who also is executive vice president of AFGE Local 3984. "I've made statements in the past that I feel less stress while working with the SWAT team -- and having weapons pointed at me by perpetrators -- than I do going into the Social Security office every day."
Americans who lose a spouse would get more money from Social Security under a bill introduced by Rep. Joe Baca, but critics worry the plan would put more pressure on an entitlement system already on the verge of going broke.When a Social Security recipient dies, their surviving spouse receives a one-time payment of $255, but they miss out on their spouse's regular Social Security check for that month.
Baca, D-San Bernardino, wants to change that, giving surviving spouses a larger "death payment" and a check for the deceased's final days. ...
Baca's bill - called the Benefit Adjustment of Social Security Income Compensation, or BASIC - calls for increasing the size of the death payment from $255 to 47 percent of the deceased person's typical monthly Social Security income, with $255 as the minimum payment.
The bill also calls for paying Social Security benefits for each day - not just each whole month - a recipient lives. At present, Baca's office said, the spouse of a Social Security beneficiary who dies May 15 will not receive their spouse's check for May. Baca's plan would send a check for half the month, on top of the death payment.
I have no idea whether this has a chance but we ought to do something about the death benefit -- either abolish it or make it more meaningful. At the moment, it probably costs about as much to administer it as it does to actually pay the benefits. My opinion is that if we are going to have a death benefit that it ought to be several times the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA), that is the monthly amount paid to the primary beneficiary on an account.
In our January 2009 report, we recommended that SSA [Social Security Administration] establish standards for field office customer waiting times and phone service to help identify and improve offices with poor service. SSA did not act on this recommendation stating that it would create problems by diverting staff already spread thin across field offices.
Field Offices are also having difficulties with some law firms that advertise nationwide to take claims and appeals for claimants. The work product is often deficient, or some send us only skeleton Internet applications. Often we spend months trying to get all the information we need to process the claim, which disadvantages the claimant. Many attorneys will not file their claims and appeals electronically. Field Offices have to manually load these paper applications into our system, which is labor intensive. We believe there should be greater accountability for law firms that represent claimants; otherwise they should collect their own fees instead of SSA doing so.
In many of our busiest offices, customers line up as early as 7:00 AM to make sure that they can be served when the office doors open. This can lead to security issues when people try to cut the line or become frustrated with waiting.
Commissioner Astrue has testified that iClaims are more accurate than claims taken by SSA employees. What he is not telling Congress is that ALL iClaims are reviewed and corrected by SSA employees before payment can be authorized. In addition, the most common error, incorrect month of election, is not considered an error under Commissioner Astrue’s financial literacy concept. Under this philosophy the client is responsible for determining the best time to begin their benefits and the SSA employee shouldn’t interfere in that decision even if the claimant's choice appears clearly disadvantageous. This philosophy as led to many claimants making uninformed decisions which will result in thousands of dollars in lost benefits. However, since claimants can’t make errors regarding the month they elect benefits, SSA’s Internet statistics look good.Skwierczynski undermines his credibility by coming across as an angry man. This does not mean that what he is saying is wrong. He knows what he is talking about.
SSA does not and will not perform audits on the Internet claims at the point they are submitted by the applicant. Instead, the claim is reviewed after an SSA employee makes the necessary corrections. This creates the illusion that the public completed the claims correctly. ...
The Commissioner announced last year that SSA’s iClaims process would allow claimants to file Internet claims without SSA employee review starting this year. SSA employees and AFGE were shocked and appalled that such changes would proceed, due to the vast number of claims that require correction before decisions about entitlement or payment amount are effectuated. The Commissioner has delayed implementation of a non‐reviewed iclaims filing process. This delay should be permanent. ...
While resources are limited and field/TSC [Teleservice Centers] staffing levels have not increased in relation to additional workloads, SSA management continues to engage in unethical behavior in processing work and measuring the amount of work completed. SSA management engages in a variety of questionable practices which are designed to enhance individual office statistical performance. Such practices include processing claims for individuals who are clearly ineligible for benefits, and padding statistics by taking unnecessary actions such as reissuing Medicare cards to every client in the office whether or not they request such cards. Systems tricks are employed by some managers to reflect inaccurate processing times in order to claim better statistical performance.
