What Do You Think?

Recommendations from the report of the Re-Imagining Social Security Subcommittee of Social Security's Future Systems Technology Advisory Panel:

Move to an electronic customer self-service model with the goal of moving transactions to the Internet each year until 90% of the business with SSA takes place online.

• Provide other channels for:

~Complex transactions that are not suited to online execution
~Those who cannot or will not use technology

• Develop a series of incentives to encourage and direct the public to utilize the electronic self-service model. ...
• Implement a program to automate the initial disability claim decision that would only require human review for denied claims. ...
• Lead a government-wide study group to discuss options with other agencies to pilot a single government service center in each region for individuals who need face-to-face service across from different agencies. (For example, IRS, SSA, INS, State Social Services, etc.)

~Consider contracting-out providing the services by third parties vs. each agency.
~Look at the model in some state DMVs. ...

~Consider outsourcing some activities to third parties, e.g. libraries.

[Scenarios demonstrating the Subcommittee's vision for the future]

Disability determination

• SSA examiner uses [information provided by claimant] along with database of prior determinations
• Decision support tools provide recommendation

~Statistical analysis and AI [Artificial Intelligence] programs gather information on similar cases and their outcomes and report to examiner

~90% of cases are determined automatically

• Positive decisions are not reviewed

• SSA staff reviews rejected claims

In case of an appeal

• The first hearing is with an AU[?], the claimant and an attorney using Google Wave

• Face-to-face hearings occur depending on the case backlog and the outcome of the Wave conference

• A scheduling system assigns cases in backlogged areas to areas that are more lightly loaded for video hearings

• Decision support for the administrative law judge

~Statistical and Al programs search the database of appeals to report on similar cases and their outcomes

Updated Fee Payment Numbers

Social Security's numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and certain others for representing Social Security claimants:

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-10	32,227	$111,440,046.23
Feb-10	29,914	$105,708,101.59
Mar-10	34,983	$122,874,426.87
Apr-10	44,740	$153,478,589.32
May-10	34,686	$119,527,194.40
June-10	32,432	$111,887,579.72
July-10	32,232	$132,328,622.27
Aug-10	34,755	$119,424,346.42

Missing 230,000 Centenarians

I had posted earlier about concerns in Japan that their Social Security system was paying retirement benefits to some supposed centenarians who had actually died years earlier. Now comes a report that there may be 230,000 such people! The Japanese Social Security records were so bad that they had 77,000 people over 120 years old listed as still alive and 884 who were supposedly over 150 years old!

Data Center Delays

From NextGov:

A stimulus project to replace an aging Social Security Administration data center is more than six months behind schedule due to a disagreement over where to locate the upgraded computer facility. ...

The government planned to purchase land for the facility in March, according to the initial project plans. But SSA and GSA officials postponed the site selection, amid questions from House Ways and Means Committee members and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, about the cost efficiency of using stimulus money for new property rather than taking advantage of available space on SSA's campus in Woodlawn, Md. ...

SSA pushed back site selection to September so GSA could thoroughly study the Woodlawn vicinity as a possible location, according to a revised Recovery Act plan Social Security issued in June. GSA now anticipates buying the property in December, according to the document. Substantial construction should be complete by October 2013.

The updated plan states that, after a formal review, SSA and staff from the House Ways and Means Committee, which had requested the cost-benefit analysis, agreed GSA should continue searching for a site off-campus.

But on Wednesday, an aide for Grassley, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, said the senator still is concerned about the government spending money to buy land, when property on Social Security's campus could be reconfigured to function as a new data center instead.

Correction: Astrue Has Been To Obama White House

I blundered in saying that Commissioner Astrue had not been to the White House during the Obama Administration. He has been there several times. Thanks to Social Security's Press Office for setting me straight. I would plead that the White House visitor database is far from user friendly but I should have double-checked something that seemed so surprising to me. I expected that the Commissioner of Social Security would be invited to certain receptions and to have at least occasional meetings with the Office of Management and Budget and perhaps to go to other meetings concerned with the implementation of new policies and legislation. It turns out that my expectations were correct while my ability to understand the White House visitor log database was faulty.

I wish I could have corrected this earlier in the day but this is a blog. I am a practicing attorney. My client's hearings must come first.

No White House Visits For Astrue In This Administration

The Obama White House has released the White House visitor records for this administration. The name of Michael Astrue, the Commissioner of Social Security, does not appear on the list. About 450,000 other names do.

Social Security Employees Rate Their Agency Highly As Place To Work

A press release from Social Security:

Social Security employees rate their agency as one of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government according to The Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation. Among the large federal agencies in the top ten Best Places to Work, Social Security also had the greatest improvement in overall employee satisfaction.

“I am always impressed by the outstanding work of our employees and by their commitment to public service,” said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. “Our workloads have grown tremendously due to the recession and we are under more pressure than ever to keep up with the increased demand for our services. Despite these pressures, every day our employees bring the energy and teamwork necessary to provide the public with the highest standard of considerate service.”

The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings draw on responses from more than 263,000 federal employees to produce detailed rankings of employee satisfaction across 290 federal agencies and subcomponents. Data from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey is used to rank agencies according to a Best Places to Work index score, which measures overall employee satisfaction. In addition to the employee satisfaction rating, agencies are scored in workplace categories such as effective leadership, employee skills/mission match, pay and work/life balance. Social Security employees gave the agency higher ratings in all of these categories when compared to the prior survey.

“Our employees make a positive difference in the lives of millions of Americans,” Commissioner Astrue said. “I encourage anyone looking for a career in public service to look closely at Social Security. You can make a difference in people's lives and your own.”

Priorities

Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on how Social Security spends its appropriated funds. There are a couple of interrelated issues covered. One issue is the appropriated money that remains unspent each year. Towards the end of each fiscal year the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, has been allowing Social Security to transfer funds that will not get spent before the end of the fiscal year to a "no-year" account that Social Security can spend in later years. This is nothing new. It has been going on for decades. At least lately, these transfers have not been nickle and dime affairs. Social Security just transferred $280 million to a "no-year" account. That is something like 2.5% of its total budget for the year. At least lately, the transferred money has been going into an account that can only be spent on information technology. The second issue is the return on investment of the money spent on information technology. Social Security is not able to document much return on investment on some of its technology expenditures.

I had concerns about technology expenditures during the term of the previous Commissioner. Even though the agency was collapsing around Commissioner Barnhart, she kept diverting more and more of the agency's scarce resources to long term information technology projects. My fear was that she wanted to make sure that as much money as possible went to contractors (who are more likely to be Republicans) than to employees (who are more likely to be Democrats and union members as well.)

OIG is asking pertinent questions about what is going on today. The service that Social Security is giving the public is not as bad as it was but it is still far from satisfactory. More money is being spend on hiring employees but still there are not enough of them to get all the work done. Huge sums are being spent or committed to information technology projects. There are still huge backlogs in continuing disability investigations and Supplement Security Income (SSI) redeterminations. Why is so much money remaining unspent at the end of each fiscal year? Why is so much money being diverted to information technology? What is the return on investment on Social Security's information technology? Is a proper balance being struck between having enough personnel to get the work done and having good technology to help get the work done?

I wonder how Social Security's operating budget would be spent if Michael Astrue had resigned as Commissioner at the end of 2008 and been replaced by a Democrat. Would Social Security's operating budget be spent differently? To ask this is not to suggest that Commissioner Astrue's decisions on spending have been politically motivated or that he does not care about the service that his agency delivers to the public. However, personal beliefs inevitably impact the decisions made by agency heads. It is only a slight oversimplification to say that it has been an article of faith among Republicans in recent decades that federal employees are bad and private contractors are good. It is reasonable to ask questions about how such a philosophy might be impacting spending decisions at Social Security.