Andrew Saul Claims A "Basically Seamless" Transition To Service Delivery With Field Offices Closed

      Next Avenue has decided to give Andrew Saul, who may be Social Security's Commissioner, its 2020 Influencers in Aging Award. (I'm not joking. There is a legitimate controversy about Saul's position.) According to Wikipedia,"Next Avenue is a digital platform launched by PBS that offers original and aggregated journalism aimed at baby boomers."

     Here's some excerpts from an interview that Saul gave to Next Avenue:

...  "To be honest, a year ago, I never thought we would be this far along now," Saul told me. "It did take us time to get up and running, but now we're going to reap the rewards of a year's planning." ...

... How has customer service improved since you've been on the job would you say?

Well, first we have to talk about, unfortunately, COVID-19, because there's no question you cannot.

When I took over here, we had a tremendous amount of plans to digitalize and modernize the way we deliver services. But obviously when March hit and we were faced with this situation, we had to keep the lights on. We had to protect our employees and our beneficiaries, and therefore we had to revert to operating from home.

And we were forced to close our offices, both our field offices and our disability hearing offices, and become a virtual operation. We had no choice.

So, the service that we were delivering was interrupted, but considering what happened, this team did an amazing job. And I think if you talk to people that use our services on an active basis, they'll say we really made a transformation here which was basically seamless.

Look, I'm not saying everything was perfect. It still isn't perfect. The last six months have really pressed the team to the limits. But having said that, I think we've done a great job in keeping the lights on and keeping the old boiler running.

Now what this [COVID-19] has taught us and what we've been doing is changing the way we do business. And I think it's going to be changed forever. ...

And the field offices?

When we hopefully go back and roll out our field office operations again, we're going to be using many more personal appointments rather than having people just come into the office. I believe the offices are going to be much better organized, with express service for certain things that people come in for on a much more regular basis.

What about the Social Security Administration's website?

We're going to have a new website, completely redesigned, which is something that is important because it's our most important face to our customer.

How far along did you get before you had to pivot in March with the pandemic?

We had most of this underway. And you know, the amazing thing about systems work is you can do it offsite.

I'm not going to tell you this [COVID-19] didn't slow us down, because we had to be able to go from an in-office to a virtual operation. Did it slow us down? Yes, it did slow us down, but now we're running well.

Before the offices were shut down for the pandemic, a lot of people would come into the offices to ask questions and sign up for retirement benefits. How much has closing the field offices slowed down the number of applications that have come in?

You know, it is somewhat slower. What's happened is we have many more eight-hundred number calls. We also have many more calls to the individual offices.

The other thing is: We are getting tremendous amount of hits on our website. I think it's up fifty, sixty percent. We've been getting almost a million hits a day. Wow.

And we are doing about fifty-three percent of our transactions online through those that have the my Social Security account. ...

What else would you like to do to improve customer service?

We're going to have to see what happens when we start reopening the offices to the public.

I don't know how much you knew about the offices before, but it was terrible. I used to go visit these offices and some of the busy ones were really a disaster, in my opinion — just people sitting around waiting. I don't want that anymore. We can't have that.

It doesn't mean that we're not going to have field offices. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have an eight-hundred [toll-free] number. But we are going as quickly as we can so that our major form of communication to our customer is digital and video. ...

Sounds Like They Want To Reduce Unnecessary Secretiveness

     From Emergency Message EM-20054:

A. Purpose
This emergency message (EM) announces an upcoming change in the business process for all instructions designated as sensitive at the time of the publication request.

B. Background
On October 1, 2020, agency stakeholders met to discuss how we apply the sensitive designation to policy instructions. Following the discussion, we developed a draft proposal to improve the application of the sensitive policy designation.

C. Proposal

For each publication, an AC signoff sheet is already required. To ensure the sensitive designation is appropriate, we will be modifying the AC-Level Signoff Document to require a more stringent review and added justification for applying the designation. 

      And here's the signoff sheet:

Section A – This signoff is for:

   A Sensitive Instruction (these instructions are for internal SSA use only – if being designated as a sensitive instruction, what criteria does it meet? please check appropriate box below, highlight that specific section in your attachment and complete the ‘Background’ section below following this determination)

☐  Descriptions of internal security controls and override instructions in claims processes

☐ Instructions which explain to employees what steps they must take to effectuate or redirect a payment or to override an internal control feature; or

☐ Instructions designed to detect fraudulent documents and actions

 

Background/Justification:

 

SSA Doing Poor Job Of Identifying Disability Recipients Eligible For Student Loan Relief

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

Background: Individuals with TPD [Total and Permanent Disability] are eligible to have their Federal [student] loan debt discharged. To assist ED [Education Department] in fulfilling its obligation to ensure borrowers with disabilities who have Federal student loans more efficiently and effectively apply for TPD discharge of their student loans, SSA [Social Security Administration] and ED entered into a computer-matching agreement. ED accepts SSA’s MINE [Medical Improvement Not Expected] designation as evidence of TPD and uses SSA match responses to identify and inform borrowers with TPD of their eligibility for student loan discharge. In 2016, SSA’s initial match under the agreement identified approximately 400,000 borrowers with TPD. SSA reported these matches to ED. Since that time, SSA and ED have conducted similar quarterly data matches.

Findings: SSA needs to improve its data-matching process to assist ED in administering the TPD discharge process for disability beneficiaries with student loan debt. We estimate data matches SSA completed during our review period did not identify 36,248 borrowers with MINE status. This occurred because SSA had incorrect coding in its Disability Control File or had converted the beneficiaries from disability to retirement benefits. As a result, SSA did not identify these beneficiaries to ED as eligible for loan discharge.

     Let me explain why this is important. Many, many disabled people have outstanding federal student loans. Mostly it's loans they took out. Sometimes, they were a guarantor of a loan to a child.  It's almost impossible to discharge these loans in bankruptcy. The lenders are pitiless and the laws draconian. Much of the "education" was worthless. These loans can be $100,000 or more. People who are disabled desperately need to get out from under these loans. It sounds like SSA is making a mistake for almost 10% of claimants. That's not 10% of claimants who should be eligible for relief but 10% of ALL claimants. That's a huge error rate. Also, this sort of error assures that SSA will be wasting money doing unnecessary continuing disability reviews for people who they already know won't improve. It also assures that the Department of Education has to slog through a lot of applications for TPD status proven by means other than a Social Security determination that could have been cleared quickly if the Department of Education had just received appropriate information from SSA.

     To my mind, this problem deserves a Congressional hearing.

     Notice the chart below from the report. Why did the identification of those eligible for loan discharge decline so abruptly after the 2016 election?

Analysis Of Reduction In SSI Claims Filed Since Field Offices Shut Down

     This slide deck 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. Click on each to view full size.

    I think we should all expect that once Social Security field offices reopen that there will be a huge number of disability claims filed. I hope there will be enough staff to take and adjudicate those claims.

 

I'm Surprised By The Amount Of Overtime In The Third Quarter

       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 is basic operating statistics for Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations.

Click on image to view full size

Issuing A Directive

      A press release:

Today, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John B. Larson (D-CT) and Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny K. Davis (D-IL) sent a letter directing the U.S. Department of Labor to halt consideration of a proposed transfer of the Ticket to Work program from the Social Security Administration to the U.S. Department of Labor. The Ticket to Work program provides services to help Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability beneficiaries who are attempting to return to work.

“In 1999, Congress placed the new Ticket to Work and Self-Sufficiency program (Ticket program) under the Social Security Administration (SSA), because of the close coordination between SSA and program participants, including beneficiaries and service providers, that is essential to the operation of the Ticket Program. Nothing has changed to warrant a transfer to the Department of Labor (DOL),” wrote Larson and Davis.

“By law, the Department of Labor does not administer the Ticket program,” continued Larson and Davis. “We do not intend to consider legislation to remove the administration of the Ticket program from SSA and place it at DOL. We therefore expect the Department to halt any further consideration of this inappropriate and detrimental proposal.”

Opposition To AAJ Hearings

      A press release:

Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA), Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John B. Larson (D-CT), and Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny K. Davis (D-IL) released the following statement after the Trump Administration announced it would finalize a rule on December 16, 2020 to change the Social Security Administration’s appeals process by replacing independent and impartial Administrative Law Judges with internal agency lawyers: 

“For nearly two years, we’ve sounded the alarm that this change would erode due process for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income applicants and beneficiaries and threaten their access to their earned benefits. The rule puts unqualified agency staff in control of deciding appeals hearings and contradicts the congressional intent of the law governing such proceedings. We condemn this political decision that will go into effect just as the Trump Administration is on its way out the door. It is our hope that the Biden Administration rights this grievous wrong and ensures that all those who are eligible can access their disability, retirement, and survivors’ benefits.”

     No mention of the Congressional Review Act. 

Regs On AAJ Hearings To Go Into Effect On December 16

      Monday's Federal Register will contain new final regulations from Social Security on Hearings Held by Administrative Appeals Judges of the Appeals Council. You can read the regulations today. The effective date is December 16. I do not expect that these regulations will be implemented during the Biden Administration. It is possible that they will be disapproved under the Congressional Review Act. Neither a filibuster nor the Senate Majority Leader can prevent a Congressional Review Act vote.

     The explanatory material published contains this sentence (emphasis added): "Because AAJs and ALJs have similar levels of training, will follow the same set of policies, and have equivalent decisional independence, we anticipate that when AAJs are used at the hearing level, they will provide the same level of service and fairness as ALJs do." I can't say that I take that statement at face value. In fact, if true, I don't know what the point of these regulations is.