Walk In Service Matters -- Especially If SSA Can't Answer Its Phones

     From HuffPost:

Byron Jones just wanted a printout with his Social Security number on it so he could apply for an apartment.

But when Jones showed up to the Social Security office in Northeast D.C. with a receipt saying he’d filled out an online application for a replacement card, a man at the door turned him away, explaining the office is closed except for appointments.

Jones, a 45-year-old hospital worker, didn’t know what else to do. If he has to wait until the replacement card arrives in the mail, he said, he’ll miss his chance this week to fill out a rental application for the apartment he wants.

“No one answers the phone,” he said. “It hangs up on me and then when I get down to the Social Security place, they say I’m not allowed to come in.” ...

Jones ...  was just one of five people HuffPost observed knocking on the Northeast D.C. field office door Monday and being turned away — all within half an hour.  ...

In May 2021, the Social Security Administration announced people who need replacement cards can arrange special “express interviews,” but only if they’re unable to order a new card online, as Jones had already done. Jones said he had planned to apply for an apartment this week and the card won’t arrive on time, and all he needed was some other document proving he had a Social Security number.

The field office worker who turned Jones away gave him a number to call. He dialed it right away and got a busy signal.

     I keep posting this sort of thing because the biggest issue facing the Social Security Administration now, by far, is its inability to do that which it was created to do, serve the public. I see an agency in the midst of a crisis. It seems incapable of doing anything other than urging the public to use its online systems, even though it knows that the online systems are incapable of handling many issues and many people with issues are incapable of using the online systems for anything.

These Aren't "The Good Old Days" At Social Security

      A former Social Security employee can't believe how bad service is at his old agency these days. By the way, I was around in what he supposes were the "good old day" and service wasn't all that great even then. It's deteriorated tremendously since then and is just unbelievably bad now.

Senators Asking Pointed Questions

       The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and 16 other Democratic Senators wrote a letter to the Acting Commissioner of Social Security on January 25 asking pointed questions about the state of service to the public at the agency. 

     Now, if these same Senators would just insist on giving the Social Security Administration an adequate appropriation, we just might get somewhere. If they even scheduled a hearing on the issue, it would help. Social Security is only the most important Democratic legislative victory in FOREVER. You'd think Democratic Senators would be extremely protective of the agency that administers this towering achievement.

Public Has Low Opinion Of Social Security Service

      From a press release:

Citizen satisfaction with U.S. federal government services declines sharply in 2021, down 2.6% to 63.4 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s (ACSI^®) 100-point scale. This is the fourth consecutive annual decline in citizen satisfaction and marks an unprecedented run of negative movement in the index. Significantly, the federal government score is now at its lowest-ever recorded level. The results for this study are based on interviews with citizens who experienced a federal government service throughout 2021. ...

     This is what happens when government operations are starved for operating funds.

Unhappy Employees At Social Security

      From Federal News Network:

... The President’s Management Council, together with the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration, released the first data from its Federal Pulse Survey.

The first-round pulse survey, a pilot project which launched in October, went out to the approximately 2 million civilian federal employees who work in the 24 largest agencies. ...

Employees at SSA, followed by the Veterans Affairs Department and USAID, were more likely than employees at other agencies to feel exhausted in the morning at the thought of another day of work.

Employees at DHS and SSA said they were most likely to take another job that offered the same pay and benefits as their current position. ...

Respondents who work at SSA, followed by USAID, gave the lowest marks to the reasonableness of their workloads. ...

The survey data shows employees at the Interior Department, Social Security Administration and the State Department showed the lowest response rate. ...

Final 2021 Trust Fund Numbers

      Social Security has posted final 2021 numbers for the Trust Funds. There are two tables below, the first for combined Old Age, Survivors and Disability Trust Funds (even though these are two separate funds) and then for the Disability Trust Fund alone. As always, click on the image to view full size.

Trajector Lays Off 500 Employees

      I have no idea where this leaves their Social Security operations. This may just affect their VA claims operations. I’m getting the 500 number from anguished tweets from laid off employees.

First I've Heard Of This

      From Market Watch:

Devin Carroll knew that Social Security is the backbone for many Americans’ retirement security, and yet, because it’s wildly complicated to understand, and everyone’s situation is different, people often lose out when they claim these benefits. 

As a result, there was a “tremendous appetite” for information about Social Security, so Carroll, founder of Carroll Advisory Group, created a blog called Social Security Intelligence and, in 2015, began a YouTube channel, though it didn’t get much traction at first. Two years after abandoning the YouTube project, he noticed one of his videos had 40,000 views, so he decided to try it again. His videos and blogs eventually brought in so much traffic—with thousands of hits—that he was bombarded with questions. 

“It got to the point I wasn’t able to help people,” he said. “It would have taken all day and then some to respond to these emails.” Instead, he created a group on Facebook in 2019, where people could ask and answer questions. It is one of many groups dedicated to personal finance. 

The group, called Social Security Intelligence Member’s Group, has 21,300 members, who discuss strategies and scrutinize the extensive rules under the Social Security Administration. Carroll has administrators who run the page, and they provide answers to users’ questions. Other members also join in to give their perspective. “It gives them a community,” Carroll said. “The community is answering. And if someone gives a wrong response, someone calls them out on it.”