Happy Veterans Day

Social Security Treated Employee Worse Because He Was A Vet

     From Bloomberg Law:

A former attorney adviser with the Social Security Administration convinced the Federal Circuit Nov. 7 that his veteran status was a substantially motivating factor in the agency’s 2011 decision to fire him.

As a qualifying veteran hired by a government agency, Clarence McGuffin was entitled to a shorter probationary period than other non-veteran new hires before the full suite of Civil Service Reform Act rights vested. Those rights include the right to appeal adverse employment actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board....

 “We want to terminate him so that he does not acquire MSPB rights,” read one intra-agency email quoted in the opinion. Another email stated that McGuffin was a “vet” who “has to be terminated in his first year.” ...

McGuffin was let go from his attorney adviser position in SSA’s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review in part because he allegedly wasn’t producing his “fair share” of work, a monthly quantity determined by dividing the office’s caseload across all of the attorney advisers charged with authoring benefits appeals decisions. But SSA isn’t supposed to use an attorney adviser’s “fair share” production as a performance metric until their second year with the agency, Reyna said. ...

“The record is clear that SSA closed the door on Mr. McGuffin well before the end of his first year to avoid the inconvenience of defending itself should Mr. McGuffin assert his procedural safeguards afforded under the CSRA,” Reyna said. The court reversed the contrary decision from the MPSB and remanded the case for further proceedings. ...

The case is McGuffin v. SSA, Fed. Cir., No. 17-2433, 11/7/19. ...

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.