No Overtime At Payment Center

An e-mail I recently received:

Hello. I work for the Social Security Administration, Payment Center 7, in Baltimore, MD, as a Claims Authorizer (CA).

We handle the SSA disability case workload. One function of my job is to trigger ALJ [Administrative Law Judge] disability awards to payment, providing the non-medical requirements are met. We also do post adjudicative work, such as imposing and removing workers' compensation offset.

CA's have had overtime offered to us for years, both during the week and on the weekend. We need the overtime hours to keep up with our workloads.

Today, Friday the 11th, all the Modules in the Security West Building (PC7) had emergency meetings to announce that all overtime is cancelled indefinitely for all positions. This is apparently related to the budget situation and the continuing resolution.

Hopefully they will find a way to resolve this and restore overtime soon, at least on weekends. I fear that claimants will suffer if this situation is not resolved shortly.

The disability caseload keeps growing, and the cases and disabled claimants are not going to magically disappear, and it seems that some in Congress don't understand this. It is somewhat discouraging to think that someone who has waited for years to have an ALJ hear their case will now have to wait longer to have their award processed, even after the favorable ALJ decision is made.

$200 Million Gone

It appears that Democrats have agreed to rescind $200 million that had previously been appropriated for investment in Social Security's information technology infrastructure. Information Week Government reports on just how urgent this investment is.

It is unclear where this leaves Social Security's appropriations otherwise.

Update: It appears that the $200 million recission is part of a deal for a three week continuing resolution.

Fee Payments Stats

Updated numbers from Social Security 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
Sept-10	32,660	$108,650,373.60
Oct-10	38,705	$128,133,064.77
Nov-10	31,788	$106,559,848.38
Dec-10	33,315	$108,879,872.67

Jan-11	34,467	$113,459,847.04
Feb-11	33,305	$107,796,771.38

Why Appropriations Matter

Information Week Government has a strong reminder of why the appropriations bill passed by the House of Representatives would be terrible for Social Security. Social Security's primary data center is obsolete. There is a serious risk for catastrophic failure. The House appropriations bill would take away the money already appropriated to replace the data center.

Study Finds Excellent Public Experience With iClaims

Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently did a study of claimant experience with Social Security's online application process for retirement benefits. Here is an excerpt (footnote omitted):

To obtain applicants’ perceptions of the iClaim application and determine whether applicants filing for RIB [Retirement Insurance Benefits] using the iClaim application were receiving an appropriate level of service from SSA, we discussed their experiences with 200 applicants who filed an RIB iClaim application in May 2010.5 Based on our discussions, we determined that applicants had a positive perception of the RIB iClaim application process. In fact, 198 of the 200 applicants identified their experience filing online to be excellent, very good, or good, with almost half providing the top rating of excellent (see Chart 1).

There is one big caveat to this. The report is only talking about retirement claims which are, by far, the simplest claims that Social Security takes. A study of the far more complex online disability claims would show that Social Security still has a long way to go.

Bad Signs

From the Associated Press:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warned on Friday that GOP senators will not vote to increase the government's borrowing limit unless President Barack Obama agrees to rein in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, laying down a high-stakes marker just weeks before the debt ceiling is reached.

Meanwhile, a senior Treasury official" warns that a government shutdown may be unavoidable

Protecting Employees And Public

The proposed rules to protect the public and Social Security employees at hearings will appear in the Federal Register tomorrow. They do not amount to much.

I am not buying the statement that there can be no further review of a decision to force a telephone hearing on a claimant. Social Security may not review that any further but the federal courts certainly would since it has obvious due process implications. However, I have no fear that this provision will be abused.

Will OIDAP Be Scientific?

The Chairman of Social Security's Occupational Information Development Advisory Committee (OIDAP) has posted an interesting statement on OIDAP's website suggesting that Social Security and OIDAP may be starting to get the message that not everyone trusts them. Here is a brief excerpt:

The OIS [Occupational Information System] project faces a variety of misconceptions that could inhibit its rapid development. Foremost, the OIS’s development is scientific. Because the elements of its development are not tangibly put into test tubes, this premise is often missed or minimized by stakeholders. The OIDAP’s advice and recommendations to SSA for the development of the OIS hinge upon the importance of good science, the scientific process, and scientific integrity as cornerstones.

So the response to the criticism of OIDAP is to claim to be scientists seeking neutral facts.

Give me a break.

No matter how wonderfully scientific the data collection is, there is every sign that OIDAP and Social Security are determined to make decisions before, during and after data collection to assure that the scientific data is presented in such as way as to conform to Social Security's desires to support current policies. Stuffing the data collected into categories such as "Sedentary", "Light" and "Medium" is an inherently imprecise business that requires many judgment calls. The agency seems to want to be certain that there is no one like the Department of Labor who can say "Stop" when it makes judgment call after judgment call in one direction. This has happened before even with the Department of Labor involved. See above. Nothing whatsoever that OIDAP has done would give the least bit of assurance that they have any other plan.

OIDAP's critics are convinced that the U.S. labor market has changed dramatically and that these changes seriously undercut current Social Security policies. The cognitive demands of work have gone up and there are far fewer manufacturing jobs. This should lead to changes in Social Security disability determination such that more claims would be approved but OIDAP's critics believe that Social Security and OIDAP are determined to prevent such changes and may even want to manipulate the data to support denying more claims.

There have been many signs that OIDAP members have been looking way outside their charter to find ways that Social Security can deny more claims.