Former Social Security Employee Sentenced

   From the Associated Press:

A Social Security Administration employee who accessed numerous accounts and falsified records so he could steal nearly $100,000 from the agency has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison.

Nicholas Pao had pleaded guilty in March to theft of government funds and two counts of aggravated identity theft. The 38-year-old Egg Harbor Township [NJ] recently received a 34-month prison term and must pay full restitution to the agency. ...

So Why Is Telework Ending?

     From Government Executive:

Since the Social Security Administration’s announcement last week that it would end its seven-year-old telework pilot program for nearly 12,000 employees, officials have cited two reasons for Commissioner Andrew Saul’s decision: long wait times for customers and an inability to evaluate employee performance. ...

[C]ounter to the agency’s assertions, the inspector general found that telework actually improved productivity for employees at teleservice centers, which administer the 800 number. In fiscal 2017, teleworkers took an average of four additional calls per day than non-teleworkers, resolved those calls more quickly than employees in the office and spent an additional half hour each day helping customers. ...

[A Social Security spokesperson] told Government Executive that another reason for ending the telework program is that managers cannot evaluate teleworking employees’ performance under the current rules. ...

That argument perplexed officials at the American Federation of Government Employees. Sherry Jackson, third vice president of AFGE Council 220, which represents employees in Social Security’s operations units, said teleworking employees’ actions are heavily monitored for evaluation.

“All of our keystrokes are measured,” Jackson said. “Any inputs we do on the computer are monitored and measured. Everything on the SSA system is measured, so it’s disingenuous to say that there’s no productivity and no control over what people are doing in their homes, because everything on a government computer is measured and recorded. If people were not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, this pilot would have been ended and not continued for seven years.” ...

     We really need a House Social Security Subcommittee oversight hearing.

Nominee Moves Forward Despite Misuse Of Confidential Social Security Information

     From the New York Times (emphasis added):

A judicial nominee slated for a key Senate committee vote on Thursday helped devise an illegal Education Department effort to use private Social Security data to deny debt relief to thousands of students cheated by their for-profit colleges, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

The plan, outlined by Steven J. Menashi when he was acting general counsel under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, was ruled by a federal judge to violate federal privacy laws. She ordered the department to stop the practice.

In the memo, President Trump’s appeals court nominee, who left the Education Department to join the White House legal team, outlined the department’s plan to use earnings data from the Social Security Administration to forgive only a small percentage of debts shouldered by 30,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain that the Obama administration found misled thousands of students. Corinthian’s collapse left its students and graduates with worthless degrees and mountains of debt. ...

The department halted use of the data after Judge Kim’s ruling. It had obtained the data from the Social Security Administration to implement another Obama-era regulation intended to force for-profit colleges to show that their degrees would lead to gainful employment.  

In his memo, Mr. Menashi wrote that data obtained to hold for-profit colleges accountable could be repurposed to scrutinize their students. ...

     Menashi's nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday by a vote of 12-10.

A Lot More Going Out Than Coming In

     This was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. It concerns operations in the agency's Office of Hearings Operations. 

Data Security Lacking

     From a recent study by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Our objective was to determine whether the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) overall information security program and practices were effective and consistent with the requirements of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA), as defined by the Department of Homeland Security(DHS). ... 

Although SSA established an Agency-wide information security program and practices, we identified a number of deficienciesrelated to Risk Management, Configuration Management, Identity and Access Management, Data Protection and Privacy, Security Training, Information Security Continuous Monitoring, Incident Response, and Contingency Planning. Many of the weaknesses we identified were similar to the deficiencies reported in past FISMA performance audits. SSA’s information security program was “Not Effective” according to DHS criteria. ...

     No details are given in the brief stub of a report released to the public.

Abiity to Manipulate Is A Big Deal

     Here is an excerpt from a news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued on February 21, 2019:

... Almost all workers were required to use fine manipulation (97.0 percent) and gross manipulation (99.4 percent). ...

     Note that Social Security Ruling 96-9p says that  "any significant manipulative limitation of an individual's ability to handle and work with small objects with both hands will result in a significant erosion of the unskilled sedentary occupational base." It seems to me that that it would now be more accurate to say that even the loss of manipulation results in a significant erosion of the entire occupational base, without regard to exertional level and without regard to the distinction between gross and fine manipulation.
     I have checked with Social Security. This news release was based on a study done at the behest of the Social Security Administration and is part of the effort to produce a new occupational information system. 

     Here are some other excerpts with less immediate importance:

• Approximately 31.5 percent of workers had preparation time requirements that included more than a short demonstration and up to 1 month of preparation and 19.0 percent were required to have between 2 years and 4 years of preparation time. 
• High school was the most common minimum education level for workers in 2018, with 40.7 percent of jobs requiring at least a high school diploma. 
• There was no minimum education level required for 31.5 percent of jobs, while a bachelor’s degree was required for 17.9 percent of workers. 
• On-the-job training was required for 76.8 percent of all civilian workers in 2018. Prior work experience was required for 47.0 percent of workers and 33.0 percent of workers were required to have completed pre-employment training. 
• A medium strength level was required for 35.5 percent of workers, while a sedentary strength level and a light strength level were required by 26.6 percent each. A heavy work strength level was present for 9.6 percent of workers and a very heavy work strength level accounted for the remaining 1.7 percent of workers. 
• Traditional keyboarding was required for 63.3 percent of workers. 

     There is nothing in this summary showing the number or percentage of jobs at, let's say, the sedentary level where the specific vocational preparation time was 30 days or less, the definition of unskilled work. If you're at all familiar with these matters, you know that's a critical question. BLS has released some access to the underlying data. I can do some searches on it but I'm unable to do a combined search for both unskilled and sedentary jobs. I'm not saying you can't do such a search. I'm just saying I can't. I hope others with more familiarity and more skill than me can take a look at this database. I'm going to take a wild guess that Social Security already knows the answer to this question.

The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

     A press release from Social Security:

“Thank you for your interest in the Social Security Administration and for reading this Open Letter to the Public to learn more about what we are doing to improve service.

A Little about Me:
I have been frequently asked why, at age 73 with a loving wife of 51 years, a beautiful family, and a successful business career, I would want to take on the responsibility and stress of running a huge government organization that affects nearly every American. My answer is simple. I took the job as Commissioner of Social Security because I saw that this very important agency faced an increasing number of challenges. Millions of Americans depend on SSA to do our job well, each day, no excuses—because when we don’t, people suffer. I took the job because SSA must dramatically improve customer service for you, your loved ones, and everyone who depends on our programs.

What is My Plan?
When I speak to groups of SSA employees, to my senior managers, and to external groups including Congress, they ask what I plan to accomplish. It is no secret that the government is full of bureaucratic processes. There are Agency Strategic Plans, Annual Performance Plans, Budget documents for this and future years, IT strategic plans, and any number of internal organization planning documents. I understand that these writings serve to provide direction and transparency, but I doubt most employees or members of the public read them. I am hopeful that this letter will answer your questions in a straightforward and easy to follow way.

My plan is rooted in common sense. SSA has many departments and over 60,000 employees who perform millions of functions each year. But, whether it is issuing retirement checks, processing disability claims, or providing Social Security cards, our fundamental mission is to ensure timely and accurate service for the public. My plan is to emphasize and restore fundamental public service so that when you call us, we answer timely. When you come to our offices, we serve you timely. When you apply for benefits, you receive a timely answer from us and, if you are approved for benefits, you receive a timely check from us. Some SSA employees and the three unions who represent them may suggest we simply want to push employees even harder. I’ve run enough businesses and organizations to know that no employer gets 100% from every employee every day—there is always room to improve. Over the past 5 months, I have met with and observed many, many SSA employees. Let me tell you what I determined: they care. They are just as concerned and stressed about work piling up as I am. They dread the feeling of coming into work knowing the public will line up and wait far too long for correct answers. That is demoralizing. I don’t want our excellent employees to feel beaten down or think that headquarters fails to appreciate their challenges. By getting wait times down, we allow our employees to do their work in a better environment where they can focus on the action in front of them not the piles of work around them.

As important as it is to serve you timely, we need to serve you well. We need to evaluate how we train our employees, review their work and give feedback, and appropriately simplify our policies to be easier to implement and understand. I have reviewed audits and noted that we consistently receive poor marks in certain areas. You should expect that we will properly pay benefits to only the folks who are entitled to them and we should always pay them the correct amount. That is important not only for stewardship but also to each of you who receives a check from us. I also cannot ignore the message from significant workloads like litigation, which can occur when we do not properly apply policy. Yes, we must address the affected cases but we must also fix the root cause. Getting things wrong has been very costly to us. It is time to invest in ensuring we get things right.

Part of the answer is technology. However, before we can readily implement more efficient systems, we have to fix some core issues. Did you know we store a beneficiary’s address in something close to 20 different systems? If you move, we can change your address in one place but that may not change it in the others. We are working to fix this and other problems. Our new approach will not look at our services from our vantage point, such as using a specific system to complete a singular action we are working on in the moment. We will look at our work from your perspective. Meaning, if you go online and then call us and then come in to an SSA office, our employees will know that history and you don’t have to start from square one each time.

However, technology alone is not the solution. Sure, many people like the idea of going online for convenient service and we need to modernize and meet that need. But, many other people need a little extra help, a little more information, maybe even some reassurance from an expert. Thus, we need a responsive workforce. We already have people who care deeply about our mission and the public. Now we need to have enough folks to meet the demand so that they can spend the time they need to handle each customer’s need correctly. We need to implement additional quality checks so that we can let our employees know when they misapplied a policy or missed a key issue. Our employees want this feedback. We need to give our employees what they need to get you the right result.

We need to assess how we do our work, how we use technology, and how we empower our employees at SSA. All of those things are complicated, but they are necessary to accomplish my plan for SSA. What is the plan? We are going to work every day to improve the public service you receive from us. As I said, common sense.

What happens next?
Right now, SSA’s Office of Systems is working with public and private sector experts to modernize our technology infrastructure so that we can serve you more efficiently and with greater accuracy. At the same time, we are shifting resources to the front lines of our public service operation. Our Office of Operations manages nearly all of our public facing services like the field offices in your communities and the National 800 Number. It is logical and appropriate that we focus on these offices first. Some people may believe that is a “hiring freeze” but I call it “smart hiring”—sending our resources to the front lines where you benefit most. Dependent on our final appropriation for fiscal year 2020, we are targeting additional hiring in these public service offices, and I have already directed that SSA hire 1,100 more people to do this work. During a time of more constrained resources, the agency closed field offices early on Wednesdays. We are ending that practice to provide you with additional access to our services. We are also ending a telework pilot, which was implemented without necessary controls or data collection to evaluate effectiveness or impact on public service. I support work-life balance for SSA employees consistent with meeting our first obligation: to serve the public. A time of workload crisis is not the time to experiment with working at home, especially for the more than 40,000 employees who staff our public facing offices.

Modernizing technology and getting more employees back into the offices are critical first steps. We will take additional steps to chip away at our current wait times; however, the first obvious move is an infusion of resources into key offices, increasing the availability of those offices to the public, and holding all of our employees accountable. We know how important our work is and understand the consequences of poor service.

You will hear from me again with straightforward information about our progress. I appreciate your patience as we work to improve our performance in service to you.”

     Am I wrong to think that this shows that Saul shares the standard right wing assumption that poor service at federal agencies is due to lazy federal employees? That's so naive.
     I really want better service at the field offices but I strongly doubt that keeping field offices open on Wednesday afternoons will achieve that goal. I suspect it will have the opposite effect. This is the sort of thing that comes out of the assumption that federal employees are lazy.
     Adding an additional 1,100 employees to front line positions is great but funding is going down, not up, so the question has to be "What other jobs will be cut?" He doesn't answer that question. Hearings operations is the obvious answer but who knows?
     By the way, "successful business career"? I'm not sure what he's done that's so successful other than being born extremely wealthy and not completely screwing up his inheritance.

FLRA Investigator Finds Evidence Of Attempted Intimidation Of ALJ Union Leaders

     From Government Executive:

An investigator with the Federal Labor Relations Authority has preliminarily concluded that the Social Security Administration illegally attempted to intimidate officials with the Association of Administrative Law Judges earlier this year.

In June, the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint alleging that in January, management officials verbally threatened to “discipline” union officials after they took official time and left the workplace to prepare for a collective bargaining negotiation session, despite the fact that the practice is spelled out in an existing union contract and a memorandum of understanding.

“We don’t have union offices like other unions, so we need more flexibility to do union-related work, both for obviously practical reasons and for confidentiality concerns,” AALJ President Melissa McIntosh said. “We were preparing for contract negotiations, and [management] knew that because the period was negotiated in our ground rules.”

McIntosh said that the agency officials did not specify how they would discipline union representatives who continued to use official time off-site, and they refused to submit the warning in writing.

“So I contacted the acting commissioner [Nancy Berryhill by email], and a meeting resulted,” McIntosh said. “There, we were admonished [by Deputy Commissioner Theresa Gruber] to ‘adhere to the chain of command,’ to be patient and that the incident was a small matter.”

This week, the FLRA informed the union and the agency that an investigator has determined that the complaint “has merit,” meaning there is sufficient evidence to indicate that management interfered with employees’ rights to engage in union activity. ...