OIDAP Extends Time Period For Comments

A notice received by e-mail from the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP):

On May 4, 2010, the Social Security Administration published a Request for Comments on the recommendations contained in the report of the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel entitled Content Model and Classification Recommendation for the Social Security Administration Occupational Information System, September 2009. The comment period is extended to June 30, 2010.

For additional information, or to provide comments on the report, please see the attached notice and visit http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#docketDetail?R=SSA-2010-0018. If you submitted comments prior to this notice, you will be contacted by project staff to determine if you wish to post your comment to the internet website.

I encourage anyone reading this blog to study the OIDAP report and to make comments. As our Vice President would say "This is a big ___ing deal." OIDAP is dealing with the most important policy issue faced by the Social Security Administration in more than 30 years. Something is going to happen. This is not going away. There is an excellent chance that this will bring about a complete redesign of disability determination by people whose main interest is the contracts they can obtain from Social Security, people who have no idea of the practical effects of what they are doing.

Texas Textbooks And Social Security

From TPM (emphasis added:

With the long-running Texas history textbooks standards fight scheduled to end with a final vote by the State Board of Education Friday, arch-conservative board member Don McLeroy is proposing a new set of changes that read like a tea party manifesto.

The new amendment (.pdf), which is expected to get a vote on Thursday, would require high school history students to "discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio" and also "evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty."

Regard The Scuttlebutt As True

Paul Mariani has written an article for First Things on Michael Astrue and his poetic alter ego, A.M. Juster. Mariani is a poet and professor at Boston College. First Things describes itself as "...an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." I think it would be fair to say that First Things expresses primarily a right-wing, Roman Catholic perspective on the world.

Here are a few excerpts from the article titled, "Regard the Scuttlebutt As True" (a phrase of Astrue's invention):

[Astrue] belongs to a type of quiet and careful civil servant that Caesar Augustus would have recognized. As would Phillip II and Napoleon and Gladstone, for that matter. Powerful governments have always needed this kind of man: the senior administrator, the superior public official who (to reverse the entropy the Irish senator W.B. Yeats feared) makes the center hold and keeps things from falling apart. ...

This formal and clever poet must find some such sense of the comic necessary, as he changes places each morning with that formal and intelligent commissioner of Social Security—since, as you’ve probably already guessed, they are one and the same person. Michael J. Astrue is the best poet ever to hold a truly major appointed position in the American government. And A.M. Juster is the best senior civil servant of whom American poetry can boast.

The question, of course, is why this double life of a public persona? Why has this former head of a major biotech firm, a lawyer, and a public servant chosen to share the same shadow as this very private poet with the sensitivity of a W.H. Auden mixed with the scathing wit of a Jonathan Swift? An even more fascinating question is why Astrue has for so long insisted on keeping these two identities separate. Years ago, when the poet X.J. Kennedy asked him why he insisted on using a pseudonym, Astrue told him that the main reason was that he didn’t want to be known as a novelty act—which, in truth, is more a dodge than an answer. ...

While interviewing and researching Michael J. Astrue, I have come to see him as an admirable and even kenotically selfless individual. But poring over his poems and translations, I find something even deeper. There is, undoubtedly, a fascinating and nuanced self that operates on the linguistic and sonic levels in the man’s best poems. Even within their formal edifices, Astrue reveals someone who—like Lord Byron or the late Bill Matthews, and (perhaps more to the point) Jonathan Swift—has learned to manifest his own too human vulnerability while at the same time protecting himself with his savage wit. Think of John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” in which the artist Parmigianino gestures with his hand in the painted convex surface, as if welcoming us, even as the figure in the mirror pulls away. ...

It’s worth mentioning that Astrue, like a surprisingly large number of the old New Formalist crowd, is a serious Catholic, a man who sees his work at the Social Security Administration as nothing short of a vocation to do “both the right and the compassionate thing.” ...

And make no mistake about it: Michael Astrue is a very private person. Even his poetry—clear as it is—offers as many unresolved questions as it provides us with answers. ...

There’s a moral precision about him as a man and as a public servant; without being prissy or showy in his moralism, he sets himself to the Stoic task of seeing that the jobs at hand are those that will be done. When the center holds in the midst of all the mess and madness of politics, it holds because quiet men do quiet work of public purpose.

Social Security Seeking iPhone App

From a contracting notice posted by Social Security:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is conducting a market survey to determine the availability and technical capability of qualified businesses with experience developing mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms. SSA is seeking contractor support with developing a mobile iPhone application that permits the public to access select periodic statistical records of SSA consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's direction for transparency and open government.

New Mental Listings Coming

Social Security and other federal agencies must obtain the approval of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, before publishing any proposal to amend its regulations. In the waning days of the Bush Administration, Social Security had obtained OMB approval for new Listings on mental disorders. The Listings are not the only way that people are approved for Social Security disability benefits but a very important one, especially for mental illness. The mental Listings changes approved during the Bush Administration were never published in the Federal Register. Now, a new version of the mental impairment Listings have been sent to OMB by Social Security. Probably, these are different than what the Bush White House approved but we will not know what they say until they appear in the Federal Register.

I Hate To Post This, But ...

The birthers, who claim that President Obama was born outside the U.S. , don't give up despite the existence of definitive proof that they are dead wrong. They are now claiming that there is some irregularity concerning the Social Security number assigned to Barack Obama. I have no idea what this would prove even if it were true. And did you hear that Google is trying to suppress this story?

From The NOSSCR Conference

The order of events at the conferences of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) is long established. Thursday morning is the plenary session with the most important speakers, most of them from Social Security, followed by Nancy Shor, NOSSCR's Executive Director. This plenary session was huge. The attendance at this conference is the highest in NOSSCR history, about 1,130.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue was scheduled to speak but backed out. In his stead was Many Ann Sloan, Social Security's Regional Counsel for the Atlanta Region, and Glenn Sklar, the head of Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR). There was virtually nothing that I heard from either of them that was noteworthy. Sloan said that her office had recently added 80 new attorneys. To put it mildly, Social Security has a lot of work for its attorneys! Sklar said that ODAR plans to hire 226 Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) this year. Sklar was kind enough to take questions. One question concerned what is sometimes referred to as the "rocket docket." The term "rocket docket" is used in different ways at different offices. The "rocket docket" referred to by the questioner is a practice of scheduling unrepresented claimants for very brief hearings soon after their request for hearing on the assumption that most will not show up or will say they want more time to hire an attorney. The cases of those who do not show up can be dismissed fairly quickly, making the office's statistics look better. I was surprised to hear Sklar say he had not previously heard of this sort of rocket docket. It is fairly common.

There were two speakers from Social Security's Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP). I will not bother trying to summarize what they had to say. I heard nothing new; it was mostly mind-numbing jargon that would give the average listener little idea of what is going on with OIDAP although, to be fair, it is difficult to summarize what OIDAP is up to even if you want to. I am not so sure these speakers wanted to help anyone understand what they are up to.

Among other things, Nancy Shor mentioned the huge backlogs developing at Social Security's initial and reconsideration levels of review. She wondered what will happen when all those cases finally get to ODAR. I wonder whether there would have been much improvement in backlogs at the ODAR level but for the increased backlogs earlier in the process. This was not the intention but it has been the effect. Shor mentioned that the the reconsideration step would be returning to the so-called prototype states, where recon had been dispensed with. This has been known for some time now but there was an audible gasp in the room when Shor said this. The news must not have gotten around. Shor expressed considerable concern over the centralized printing already going on at ODAR and the proposed centralized scheduling of ALJ hearings that may be coming. I do not understand why Social Security thinks that centralizing everything is a good idea. My experience is that Social Security's disseminated work processes work far better than its centralized work processes.

Nancy Shor is on OIDAP. She did not speak about OIDAP but turned the mike over to Tom Sutton, a NOSSCR member who has been following OIDAP's work closely, to speak to this, basically to give NOSSCR's institutional response to what is going on at OIDAP. Sutton made it clear that NOSSCR is extremely disturbed by the implications of what OIDAP is doing. Sutton referred to OIDAP as having a "radical approach." He indicated that NOSSCR's board of directors agrees with the recent report of the National Academy of Science that urged that Social Security not adopt its own independent occupational information system but work with the Department of Labor (DOL) to find ways to make changes in the DOL's O*NET occupational information system so that it could be used by Social Security. Sutton referred to Social Security's effort to create its own occupational information system as the "fox guarding the hen house." Sutton expressed a belief that there is major "mission creep" at OIDAP with a complete rewriting of all of Social Security's disability determination process in the making.

While Sutton's words may have seemed harsh to the speakers from OIDAP, they seemed measured to me. As a group, NOSSCR is greatly alarmed by the long term implications of OIDAP. If Social Security continues on its current path with OIDAP, I see open warfare ahead.

I do not know the intentions of whoever it was who recommended that Nancy Shor be on OIDAP but if the desire was to co-opt NOSSCR, it did not work. NOSSCR is greatly alarmed by OIDAP. Putting Nancy Shor on OIDAP and talking in jargon will not change that.

Staying In The Workforce

From Science Daily:

The decline in the generosity of Social Security benefits for workers who recently reached their 60s has been the leading cause of the trend toward delayed retirement of older men, a new national study suggests.

Between the periods of 1988-1992 and 2001-2005, there was a 4.7 percentage point increase in the number of men aged 55 to 69 in the workforce.

The new study found that between 25 and 50 percent of that increase can be explained by declining Social Security benefits, said David Blau, co-author of the study and professor of economics at Ohio State University. ...

The study identified two Social Security changes in particular that have led older men to work longer: the increase in the full retirement age beyond age 65, and the financial incentives offered to older workers to delay retirement even beyond the full retirement age.