This is, I think, the key sentence from the
Re-Imagining Social Security report that first came to light recently:
Given the projected workload increases due to the number of individuals retiring over the next two decades and other demographic trends, electronic self-service appears to be the only solution that will enable SSA to process future transaction volumes.
Really? Why?
First, if the members of this subcommittee think that handling retirement claims is a huge challenge for the Social Security Administration, either they were poorly briefed by Social Security or they were not paying attention. Encouraging those who are retiring to file their claims electronically is a good idea but even if every last retirement claim is filed electronically, Social Security's situation is not much better than it is today. Retirement claims are by far the most common type of claim filed with Social Security but they are so easy to process that they account for a surprisingly modest part of Social Security's workload.
The real problems are the survivor claims, the disability claims and appeals and SSI. Disability and survivor claims are mentioned in the report but I get the distinct feeling that the Panel members had no idea of the challenges they present. They simply assumed these problems to be minor and easily addressed. Social Security's history over the last 40 years tells us the problems with disability claims are intractable and that the problems presented by survivor claims are so complex that Social Security has scarcely tried to tackle them. I looked through the report and the term "SSI" is not even mentioned. How do you do a report on Social Security's future and not mention SSI? My experience is that SSI is irreducibly complex. Again, what kind of briefings did the Panel members get? Were they paying attention to the briefings they did receive? Panel members seem to have made the naive mistake of thinking that Social Security's employees are mainly involved in handling retirement claims. This report is directed not at the real Social Security Administration but at a fantasy agency that exists only in their imagination.
Why is it assumed that Social Security cannot get future appropriations sufficient to allow some reasonable degree of personal service to claimants? It is only by making the assumption that this is impossible that you get something like this report. History suggests that Democrats are quite concerned that there be a reasonable degree of personal service to Social Security claimants. While Republicans are more apt to give this only lip service, they have not been unconcerned with the political consequences of poor public service at Social Security. Even President George W. Bush, the most right wing President that we are likely to ever have, was not unconcerned with service at Social Security. He was consistent in giving Social Security a better break on appropriations than just about any domestic agency. Politicians of all stripes are eager to cut government costs by substituting technology for civil servants but I see no basis for a fundamental assumption that appropriations for customer service at Social Security are going to dry up. If the computers cannot be made to do the work, there will be people available to do the work. The real question is the extent to which information technology can be made to substitute for Social Security employees. This Panel had little idea what it is that Social Security's employees actually do so they had little idea of the complexity of the issues presented when trying to substitute information technology for warm bodies in this context.
Getting an outside opinion is a useful exercise but only if the outsiders know what the facts are. These outsiders know so little that they could do no more than muddy the waters.
