OGC Is Hiring

     Social Security's Office of General Counsel is hiring. They're accepting the first 1,000 applications.

What To Do About The Death Master File?

     The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) has produced a lengthy Report to Congress on Sources and Access to State Death Data. This is a role that Social Security, by default, has assumed for the federal government and, indeed, for many businesses. It's a role that Social Security has never been comfortable with and which others have criticized. 

    NAPA has come up with five possible ways to address this issue: 

• the status quo (what SSA does currently)
• designating an agency as the distributor of state death data
• a non-governmental data clearinghouse
• designating an agency as the federal repository of death data
• federal agencies contracting directly with individual states 

    NAPA regards the last two options as not feasible. 

    I'm  betting we end up with no change in the status quo. Social Security acknowledges that there are problems with its Death Master File but it's unlikely that anyone else would do better. There's certainly no other agency that wants this chore.

    By the way, this is a much better report than you usually see from a Beltway Bandit.

Happy 87th Birthday, Social Security!

 

    The woman in the photo is Frances Perkins, who may deserve the most credit for the creation of Social Security.  I've always thought that Perkins was looking into the future when this photo was taken.

Hard To Spell Isaac

    From the Washington Post:

... Inspired by Mississippi-based journalist Sarah Fowler’s brilliant Washington Post story on the folks who changed their baby’s first name — 30,000 in the past five years alone — we asked the Social Security Administration for a list of the most-changed names. They ran the numbers back to 2017. ...

EM On Covid

     Social Security has issued an Emergency Message on the evaluation of Covid cases. It goes on and on but says little. Certainly, there is no suggestion that there are standards that the agency is obliged to abide by. Everything must be "considered."

OHO Posts Updated Stats

    A Caseload Analysis Report on Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations, posted online. As always, click on the image to view full size.

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: