Proposed Regs On CDRs Coming

     The Office of Management and Budget has cleared for publication in the Federal Register a package of proposed regulations on the frequency and notice of continuing disability reviews. This is only a proposal. The public may comment on the proposed rules. This proposal had been pending at OMB since March 13. That's an extraordinary time for a proposal to be pending, suggesting that there may be something controversial in the proposal. This is Social Security's vague description of the proposal published in the Unified Agenda last Spring:

... The proposed regulations would add a new category to our existing medical diary categories that we use to schedule CDRs and would revise the criteria we follow to place a case in each of the categories. They would also change how often we perform a CDR for claims with the medical diary category for permanent impairments. These revised regulations would ensure that we continue to identify medical improvement at its earliest point and remain up to date with current research.

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.