It's The Dog Days -- Or Maybe The Tortoise Days

     There seems to be no Social Security news to write about today so I'll just post a picture of a visitor we saw this morning on the walk outside our offices.

Flyover States Like Representation?

     A map showing geographic variation in representation of Social Security disability claimants at the initial level from Legal Represetation (sic) in Disability Claims a presentation by Hilary Hoynes, of the University of California, Berkeley, Nicole Maestas, of Harvard University and Alexander Strand of the Social Security Administration at the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium: 

 

SSNs Exposed In Court Records

From a letter from Senator Ron Wyden to John Roberts, the Chief Justice:

I write with concern that federal courts are failing in their legal obligations to protect Americans’ private information, putting Americans at needless risk of identify theft, stalking and other harms. Each year, federal courts make available to the public court filings containing tens of thousands of Americans’ personal information, such as their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) and dates of birth. However, federal court rules — required by Congress — mandate that court filings be scrubbed of personal information before they are publicly available. These rules are not being followed, the courts are not enforcing them, and as a result, cach year tens of thousands of Americans are exposed to needless privacy violations. 

The Judicial Conference, the courts’ policy-making body, has known about this problem for at least a decade and has refused to act.  …

The most recent report, which was provided to my office in draft form, says the Federal Judicial Center (FIC), the courts’ research arm, has twice studied the problem of personal data appearing in public court records, in 2010 and 2015, and in both cases found significant violations of the judiciary’s privacy rules. In the most recent study, the FIC examined 3.9 million court records filed duringa one month period in 2013. It found 5,437 of these documents included one or more SSNs. If these statistics are representative of the problem, it would mean that the courts have made available to the public roughly half a million documents containing personal data since 2015. …

     I hope this isn’t happening in Social Security cases. Many, many years ago we used to put the claimant’s Social Security number in the case caption but those days are long gone. 

Such Careful Reviews

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has belatedly posted four reports for the time period of June and July. I had written recently about the lack of reports for that time period. Four is still far below what OIG had been averaging but better than nothing,

    Here's a quote from one of those newly posted reports, The Social Security Administration’s Appeals Council Workloads:

In FY 2020, 76 AAJs [Administrative Appeals Judges] issued approximately 85,000 total dispositions. While 22 AAJs issued fewer than 500 dispositions, 4 issued more than 2,500, see Figure 6. The number of dispositions per AAJ ranged from 3 to 3,731, and the median number was 1,064 dispositions.

    These files probably average around 1,000 pages now but one AAJ is carefully reviewing 3,731 of them a year? Yes, they have help but 3,731 in a year? Calling the Appeals Council a rubber stamp is an insult to rubber stamps.

My Social Security Redesigned

     An announcement from Social Security:

We have exciting news to share! We redesigned my Social Security!

It’s now easier for your clients who receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to do business with us online and find the information that they need.

With the new design, people who receive Social Security benefits or SSI are now able to update their telephone number online and see more information under the Benefits and Payments section. People who receive Social Security benefits can also change their address and direct deposit information under the My Profile tab.

While signed into their personal my Social Security account, your clients can continue to:

• Get their Benefit Verification or proof of income letter.
• Obtain replacement SSA-1099/SSA-1042S tax forms, if applicable.
• View their Social Security Statement.
• Request a replacement Social Security card.

Your clients can access their redesigned my Social Security account at www.ssa.gov/myaccount.

    Now, if they'd just allow those who have pending disability claims to access their earnings records or file retirement claims ...

Third Rail Alert

     I generally don't post about the silly ideas that various Representatives and Senators have for Social Security legislation when there's no hope of passage or even of the proposal having an impact on Social Security legislation that may be passed at some indefinite time in the future. I'm making an exception for the latest utterance by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. He's proposing that Social Security's guaranteed benefit payments should end, that Social Security benefits become subject to annual appropriations. This, of course, is going nowhere. I doubt that he could find more than one more Senator who would publicly agree with this or more than a handful of Representatives.  Senator Rick Scott, who has expressed his own absurd notions about Social Security, might agree with him. So why post about this nonsense? Senator Johnson is in a tight race for re-election against a Democratic opponent yet to be decided in a primary election. That race may determine control of the Senate in the next Congress. Johnson has touched the third rail of American politics. Here's hoping his audacity gets him the reward of spending more time with his family.

    By the way, Johnson argues that if annual appropriations are good enough for the Department of Defense, they should be good enough for Social Security. If Social Security were to receive the whooping budget increases that the Department of Defense has been receiving, Johnson's idea might not be so bad!

What's Going On At OIG?

    Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG), particularly the Inspector General herself,  has been in the news lately. OIG has been having trouble getting work out the door recently or, at least, posting notice of the work. OIG has posted zero reports online since May 26. Mostly the reports are studies of agency operations with recommendations. By contrast, here are the number of reports posted online in June and July of recent years:

• 2021 -- 13
  
• 2020 -- 11
  
• 2019 -- 11
  
• 2018 -- 14
  

Social Security Staffing At Low Ebb

    The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated numbers showing the headcount of employees at each agency. Note that these numbers do not tell the whole story. They don't account for part time employees nor for overtime. Overtime is a huge part of the story at Social Security. Here are Social Security's numbers as of March with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:

• March 2022, 59,257
  
• December, 2021 60,422
  
• September, 2021 59,808
  
• June 2021 59,707
  
• March 2021 60,675
• December 2020 61,816
  
• September 2020 61,447
  
• June 2020 60,515
  
• March 2020 60,659
  
• December 2019 61,969
  
• December 2018 62,946
  
• December 2017 62,777
• December 2016 63,364
• December 2015 65,518
• December 2014 65,430
• December 2013 61,957
• December 2012 64,538
• December 2010 70,270
• December 2009 67,486
• December 2008 63,733