Better But Not Good Enough

From Customer Waiting Times in the Social Security Administration's Field Offices, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... [W]e believe SSA [Social Security Administration] is focused on providing timely service to its customers—and, the majority of customers we interviewed agreed that SSA was successful in this goal. However, SSA faces many current and future challenges in maintaining and improving this level of service.

For example, a significant number of customers still waited more than 1 hour for service. Additionally, many others left SSA field offices before receiving service. Specifically, during the period March 1, 2009 through April 30, 2010 (the last 14 months of our audit period), about 3.1 million visitors waited more than 1 hour for service, and of those visitors, over 330,000 waited more than 2 hours. Further, in FY 2009, about 3.3 million visitors left a field office without receiving service. ...

To SSA’s credit, wait times improved during our audit period. During the first 14 months of our 21-month audit period, 7.5 percent of visitors waited more than 1 hour for service. In comparison, during the last 14 months of the audit period, the percentage of customers who waited more than 1 hour decreased to 6.1 percent. This improvement occurred despite an increase of over 1 million visitors. Additionally, the average visitor wait time for customers without appointments decreased from 21.8 minutes in FY 2009 to 20.1 minutes during the first 7 months of FY 2010.

That's A Big Mistake

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

The Social Security Administration asked its inspector general to investigate how a $32.3 billion mistake skewed its statistics on 2009 wages in the U.S.

Two people were found to have filed multiple W-2 forms that made them into multibillionaires, an agency official said yesterday. Those reports threw statistical wage tables out of whack and, in figures released Oct. 15, made it appear that top U.S. earners had seen their pay quintuple in 2009 to an average of $519 million.

The agency yesterday released corrected tables that showed the average incomes of the top earners, in fact, declined 7.7 percent to $84 million each.

Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter provided few details about the W-2 forms and declined to answer questions about how they were filed, how many were filed by the same two people, or if a hoax was suspected. “We call it erroneous, you call it fictitious. It’s the same thing,” Lassiter said. “There were some invalid, I guess is the best way to put it, W- 2s.”

To make it clear, this was a mistake in a statistical table. This would have had no effect upon anyone's Social Security benefits. I cannot guess why anyone would do this intentionally.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (emphasis in original):

Three years ago, the Social Security Administration’s Atlanta offices had the nation’s worst backlog of pending disability cases. Some very sick people, who initially had been turned down for Social Security benefits and were awaiting appeals, were losing their homes, or even dying, before getting a cent. ...

But these days, the average wait time to get an appeal hearing has been cut by more than half. The Social Security Administration has hired more staff; opened its third hearing office in the Atlanta area, in Covington; and overhauled its operations here and around the country. ...

Social Security’s downtown Atlanta office now takes 366 days on average to resolve a claim, down from 900 days — almost 2 1/2 years — in 2007, when it often had the worst turnaround time in the nation. It’s now in the middle of the pack among Social Security’s hearing offices. ...

But such numbers only count the time people spend waiting for a hearing, and don’t count several months that most cases spend in the initial phases. ...

In Georgia, the average time at the initial stages jumped from about 86 days in 2007 to 141 days this year — now a month longer than the national average. The Social Security Administration is shifting cases to other states to catch up.

Report On Representative Payees

The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has issued a report on representative payees at Social Security. Here are the recommendations:

• SSA [Social Security Administration] should expand its recent efforts to identify cases with the greatest risk of misuse by making greater use of available data, in order to target selection and monitoring activities in the most efficient way.
• SSA should establish criteria for data-driven selection and monitoring of representative payees. The agency is legally required to obtain from representative payees an annual accounting for benefit payments. It should develop a data-driven approach to obtain those accountings in a way that is tailored to different risk groups.
• SSA should increase its efforts to avoid selecting as payees people or organization that have interests which conflict with the best interests of the vulnerable beneficiaries whom they would be serving.
• SSA should implement an annual quality review sample of its payee activities, including capability determinations, payee selections, and misuse determinations.
• SSA’s Inspector General should annually review a sample of site visits to organizational payees to ensure that those visits are effective in preventing misuse and ensuring compliance with SSA policies.
• SSA’s Inspector General should examine a sample of beneficiaries with fee-for-service payees to see how the payee’s fee impacts meeting the beneficiaries’ food, shelter, and personal needs.
• SSA should take steps to improve coordination and establish automated data exchanges with other agencies that also serve SSA’s beneficiaries. There are numerous agencies that use payees or other fiduciaries or that provide protective services. The Veterans Administration, state courts, state Adult Protective Service agencies, Protection and Advocacy agencies for people with disabilities, and state foster care agencies all serve populations that include SSA beneficiaries. Improved coordination and data exchanges can better protect the people that each agency serves.

India To Press For Social Security Treaty

From the Hindustan Times:

India will press with the US during President Barack Obama's visit here next week for a social security pact aimed at providing relief from double taxation to over one lakh [100,000] Indians working there who pay nearly $ one billion annually as social security tax. ...

If the pact comes through, then Indian professionals working in the US on short term contract up to five years will not require to make any social security contribution provided they continue to make the payment in India.

The US has not been forthcoming in signing such a pact with India as US gets over $ one billion as social security tax from the Indians working. However, top Indian IT companies including Infosys and TCS have been pushing for such a pact with the US.

"Compared to Indians working in the US, the number of American professionals working here is very less. So US feels the pact will only benefit India but we have argued that as nuclear commerce with US expands, lot many US professionals will require to work here and they will also be benefited from the pact," the official said. ...

"There are indications that formal negotiations will begin following Obama's visit," said the official. Obama will be in New Delhi on November 7 and 8 during which he will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders.

New Hearing Offices In Michigan

From the Central Michigan Morning Sun:

Michigan residents have been waiting two or even three years to have their disability cases heard before the Social Security Administration.

New Social Security hearing offices in Mt. Pleasant and in Livonia are intended as ways to alleviate those long waits.

The Mt. Pleasant office opened Oct. 19; Livonia's opened in August. ...

"We already have reduced the average time it takes to process hearings in Michigan from 693 days in fiscal year 2008 to 533 days this year."[said Carmen Moreno, Regional Communications Director for Social Security] ...

A new office in Marquette is planned next year.

Happy 70th Birthday Appeals Council

A belated Happy 70th Birthday to Social Security's Appeals Council, which was established in January 1940!

State Government Furloughs And Social Security

Social Security has posted an impressive website giving information about the effects of state government employee furloughs on Social Security disability claim adjudication. Social Security is dependent upon state government employees to make initial and reconsideration determinations upon disability claims. Many states have furloughed these employees even though all costs associated with them are paid for by Social Security. This website brings home just how widespread the problem is, how long it has been going on and how much it is costing.

I am curious. Have these furloughs been an issue in gubernatorial races around the country, particularly in California?