A newly posted notice from the Office of Management and Budget about proposed regulations filed seeking approval:
| AGENCY: SSA | RIN: 0960-AI64 | Status: Pending Review |
| TITLE:Flexibility in Evaluating "Close Proximity of Time" due to COVID-19-Related Barriers to Healthcare | ||
| STAGE: Interim Final Rule | ECONOMICALLY SIGNIFICANT: No | |
| RECEIVED DATE: 05/28/2021 | LEGAL DEADLINE: None | |
The Biden administration is asking agencies to submit by July 19 finalized plans for returning federal workers to their offices. ...
“Agencies will need to have finalized their plans for both reentry and post-reentry procedures and policies by July 19,” said a task force email to agencies on Tuesday, sent in collaboration with the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration. “Agencies may submit earlier at their discretion.”
The plans should build off the draft versions that need to be submitted to OMB by June 18 and must include phased reentry schedules and other safety measures informed by current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the task force, the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration and any other relevant guidance, the email said. ...
The task force also said agencies must “satisfy applicable collective-bargaining obligations and provide ample notice to any employees who will be returning to the physical workplace, who will have altered work schedules, or who will otherwise have altered work circumstances, consistent with the agency’s intended post-reentry work environment.” ...
Axios reported on Tuesday that White House offices will bring back all employees in person between July 6 and July 23, with some exceptions. ...
The Biden Administration has released its entire Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget proposal. We already knew that it would call for a big hike in the agency's administrative budget, from $13.7 billion to $14.8 billion, an 8% increase but the entire proposal goes into much greater detail. The part that interests me is the projected number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employees (page 1,241). The proposal shows the FTE number for FY 2020 as 59,574 (actual), for FY 2021 (estimated) as 59,355 and for FY 2022 (projected) as 60,586.
A couple of things stick out. First, overtime only went down by 0.4% between FY 2020 and FY 2021. If there's been a decline in performance at Social Security, in general, it's not because of a lack of overtime. In fact, with the amount of overtime almost stable, one would expect an improvement in performance since there are fewer time-consuming disability claims being filed. However, I've seen the opposite from the field offices and the payment centers with backlogs going up substantially. Hearing office performance hasn't been negatively affected but their workloads have been way down. Second, there's an increase of 1,231 FTEs or 2% from FY 2021 to FY 2022 projected if Social Security gets the entire appropriation recommended. I don't understand. The budget goes up by 8% but the number of FTEs only goes up by 2%? Where's the rest of the money going? Will we once again see an increased operating budget drained away by IT? Of course, IT is needed but you have to have some balance with current operations. These projections tell me that Social Security management is largely unconcerned with public service.
Update: There was a comment posted saying that federal FTE numbers do not include employee overtime. It doesn't make sense to me to compute FTEs that way, especially for Social Security which usually uses a lot of overtime, but that's the way they do it.
Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) believes that federal employees, including Social Security employees have been sitting at home doing nothing while being paid over the last year. Apparently, he received a letter from Andrew Saul blaming employee unions for poor service at Social Security.
From the New York Times:
When the pandemic struck last year, the Social Security Administration shut down its national network of more than 1,200 offices as it scrambled to protect the public and its employees from the coronavirus. ...
The agency is slowly bringing back workers in accordance with safety guidelines established by the federal government.
But operations are not likely to look the same as they did prepandemic, and a segment of S.S.A. workers may continue working remotely, a significant shift for the agency, which paid benefits to 69 million Americans in 2019. ...
Social Security’s consideration of a larger role for telework is a sharp departure from its stance in November 2019, when it ended a work-from-home pilot program. ...
There has been a sharp drop in applications for S.S.I., and for disability insurance. ...
While a great deal of routine Social Security business is now transacted via its website, field office staff provide in-person assistance on complex matters, in particular on applications for disability insurance and S.S.I., says Manasi Deshpande, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
“Especially for people with lower socioeconomic status, being able to get in-person information and assistance with the application is critical to their decision to apply,” Dr. Deshpande said. “Without it, they just don’t apply.” ...
In the 10-year period Dr. Deshpande studied, Social Security closed 118 field offices, a cost-cutting move. She estimated that during that period, a total of 786,000 applicants for disability insurance and S.S.I. were discouraged from applying.
The impact of closing all field offices during the pandemic has been far greater, Dr. Deshpande said. “You’d probably need to multiply the estimates from the paper by a few times to see the effect of closing all the offices,” she said. “The 10 percent decline we measured took place with neighboring offices absorbing some of the applicants. It’s likely a much larger effect with all the field offices closed.” ...
Agency data shows a 29 percent decline in S.S.I. awards from July 2020 to April 2021 compared with the same period a year earlier, and disability awards are down 17 percent over that period. Taken together, up to 330,000 people will miss out on these benefits over a one-year period, according to an analysis of agency data by David Weaver, a former associate commissioner in Social Security’s Office of Research, Demonstration and Employment Support. ...
Social Security has a $1.5 billion budget for “program integrity,” but Congress limits that spending to reviews of disability awards that are aimed at removing people from the benefit rolls.
“A more common sense definition of program integrity would include the idea of making sure that people who are eligible for benefits are receiving them,” Mr. Weaver said. ...
From: ^Commissioner Broadcast <Commissioner.Broadcast@ssa.gov>
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2021 1:30 PM
A Message to All SSA Employees
Subject: Update on Telework
Agencies across government have gained real-time telework experience since March 2020. The pandemic forced us to implement new ways of doing business, which accelerated some positive changes and highlighted areas where we need to make additional improvements. We have done a great job under difficult circumstances ensuring our key services continue. Still, there are areas where we are falling behind.
Part of the reason for service degradation could be inefficiency in business processes due to the temporary but necessary changes we made during the pandemic. For example, requiring the public to mail in important documents like drivers’ licenses for a Social Security card is not sustainable, but iSSNRC and video and express appointments will help address that workload. We also know that not all work is portable and some members of the public, in particular our vulnerable populations, are best served in person.
The pandemic provides us a unique opportunity to build a new normal that improves public service. A part of that opportunity is to reconsider how we use telework. As a result, I have asked each component’s Deputy Commissioner (DC) to reassess telework opportunities within your components considering all we have learned during the last year. Generally, we expect to increase telework opportunities from our pre-pandemic levels. We will also be seeking input from the unions and meeting any applicable labor obligations.
Public service must remain the key driver, but issues like employee retention, recruitment, morale, space savings, continuity of government operations, and the environment will also inform our decisions. Additionally, we are participating in a government-wide initiative about the future of work, which will guide our decisions including when more employees will return to the office.
We will continue to follow the Administration’s science-driven lead on operating during the pandemic, and I will continue to share new information with you as we receive it. At the same time, we must plan for how the agency can best perform in the future.
I appreciate that telework is important to you and for your ability to plan in your personal lives so I wanted to take a moment to let you know we are working on it. Thanks again for all you are doing to be sure we take care of the people who depend on us.
Andrew Saul
Commissioner
In the twilight days of the Trump Administration, Social Security adopted new regulations allowing Administrative Appeals Judges (AAJs) to hold hearings on disability claims. Previously, only Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) were able to hold such hearings. AAJs have only handled cases pending on review at the Appeals Council. This has been concerning since AAJs, unlike ALJs, have not been thought to enjoy decisional independence.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) permits Congress to disapprove "midnight" regulations adopted as an Administration is leaving office. CRA resolutions may not be filibustered. A CRA resolution was introduced to disapprove the AAJs regulations. The problem with CRA resolutions is that they must be acted upon within a certain number of days. The computation of when the days start to run is a little tricky but, apparently, the time ran out yesterday but no action was taken on the CRA resolution on the AAJ regulations.
I would be surprised to see any AAJ hearings scheduled in the near future. There's no plausible justification since there are enough ALJs to handle the current workload and Democrats control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. Further out, who knows?
