Get Your Act Together

     Just yesterday I wrote about Social Security's noncompliance with the CARES Act, which requires the agency to accept electronic consents from digitally identity proofed and authenticated record holders to disclose Privacy Act protected records to third parties. The same day Social Security released a new Emergency Message saying that it now has a fully electronic means to give consent for release of records. The problem is that the link in the EM takes one to a webpage saying the agency is committed to protecting privacy and little else. There's supposed to be a tab for "Electronic Request for Consent to Disclose" but there's no such tab. The closest thing is a tab for "Submit A Privacy Act" request but that takes you only to a webpage giving links to the agency's privacy regulations.

    Shouldn't someone have checked to make sure the electronic request form was actually available online before posting the EM?

Social Security's Noncompliance With The CASES Act

     I'm not sure that I heard of the CASES (Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituents) Act until I saw a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. CASES requires federal agencies to "accept electronic identity proofing and authentication processes for individuals to consent to gaining personal access to, or the disclosure of, an individual’s records in possession of a federal agency to another party" and to "create templates for electronic consent and access forms and require posting of the templates on agency websites" and to "accept the electronic consent and access forms."

    Apparently, a major impetus for this legislation is the problems that Congressional offices themselves have in providing constitutent services. They want to be able to access agency records directly. However, the language isn't limited to Congressional offices. Social Security claimants should be able to access their own records as well as their attorneys. 

    Social Security seems to be wildly out of compliance with CASES and making little, if any, progress to compliance. Yes, claimants can establish electronic access to something that Social Security calls their file but that access is extremely limited. For instance, claimants can find out that an Administrative Law Judge has made a decision in their case but they cannot access the decision. They can find out that their disability claim is pending at the initial level but they cannot see what is going on other than a totally meaningless percentage that purports to show how far along their case is. Telling a claimant that their case is 55% of the way to a decision is giving them meaningless and misleading information. It doesn’t work like that. Claimants can't access the medical records in their case. Yes, attorneys can get better access to their clients' files but the attorney electronic consent and access form has so many problems that it's seldom used. If the e-1696 is submitted, the agency still contacts the claimant by telephone to make sure they really did appoint an attorney and they must still laboriously enter the information in Social Security's data systems, processes that can literally take months. Even after that, attorneys still don't get much access to their clients' files other than at the hearing and Appeals Council levels. We certainly cannot access information on what is going on at the black holes called payment centers.

Where Are The Missing Children?

      From The Hill:

… Recently, the Social Security Administration (SSA) began publishing statistics on beneficiaries by race. There are approximately 260,000 Black children receiving survivor benefits from Social Security. With nearly 1 million orphaned Black children in the country, a natural question policymakers should ask is “Where are the missing beneficiaries?”

Black children may miss out on survivor benefits because of eligibility requirements, such as the parent not having sufficient work in Social Security-covered employment. Policymakers should acknowledge the reality on the ground and ask whether those eligibility requirements need to be updated.

Black children also miss out on survivor benefits because of mistakes by SSA, a lack of awareness of benefit eligibility, and budget cuts to SSA’s administrative budget. …

Union Negotiations Start On Monday

     Joe Davidson at the Washington Post reports that negotiations between the Social Security Administration and its largest employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), are scheduled to begin on Monday. According to the Post:

... At Social Security, labor relations still are hung over from the anti-union days of the Trump administration. President Donald Trump used executive orders to sharply weaken the ability of unions to bargain with agencies, including through the unilateral imposition of contract provisions. Union leaders say current Social Security leaders don’t want to give up that authority.

A key example is telework, which Republicans claim there is too much of in the federal workforce. Restrictive telework policies were implemented under Trump and the agency now “doesn’t want to give up its power,” [Rich] Couture [of the AFGE] said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t want to give up its discretion.”

He added, “they won’t guarantee a telework program or telework levels. They won’t negotiate with us over telework, despite at one point promising to do so. That’s a huge issue that they have shown zero actual interest in fixing with us.”

Another key issue is the “very dire situation in terms of service delivery and how much it’s deteriorated in the last couple of years …” Couture said, “stemming from overwhelming workloads, low employee morale … a lack of competitive pay and benefits.” ...

SSAB On DDS

     The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has issued a 27 page report titled Social Security and State Disability Determination Services Agencies: A Partnership in Need of Attention. It's mostly descriptive. It does say that the DDS's are "struggling" and that " ... the Board believes long-standing frictions between SSA, state governments, and the DDSs call for ongoing review of how SSA and the DDSs work together and how the agency incorporates DDS needs into its overall strategic, performance, workforce, and contingency plans. ..." There's nothing I'd call a recommendation in the report.

SSA Ranks Poorly As Employer

     From Federal Times:

The results are in, and the Social Security Administration took last place among the best places to work in the federal government.

Each year, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service analyzes job satisfaction among federal workers and ranks agencies against that by size. ...

The results for 2022 are also a harbinger of federal workforce attitudes and, perhaps, shifts. And this year, the results show a discouraging trend: Federal employee engagement and satisfaction fell for the second year in a row, and only four of the 17 large agencies improved their score from 2021, according to the survey. ...

 

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    In fact, even if you compare it to all agencies, regardless of size, Social Security still comes in last. Attention must be paid.

OHO Caseload Report

 

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Warnings From Employee Unions

     From Government Executive:

Officials with the nation’s largest federal employee union on Monday sounded the alarm on the staffing crisis at the Social Security Administration, warning that without a substantial budget increase and fundamental workforce policy changes, customer service could deteriorate even further. ...

At the Social Security Administration, staffing levels are at a 25-year low, despite ever increasing numbers of beneficiaries. ...

Although Congress appropriated around $785 million in additional spending for Social Security in the fiscal 2023 appropriations package, officials at the American Federation of Government Employees said after inflation, the impact of the new funding was “negligible.” Workloads for agency employees remain unsustainable, and around 1,000 workers are leaving the agency per month due to burnout and insufficient pay, benefits and workplace flexibilities. ...

Jessica LaPointe, president of AFGE Council 220, which represents field office, teleservice center and workload support unit workers at the agency, said management’s approach to dealing with the staffing crisis is simply making more people want to quit. The union and management are slated to begin renegotiation on six articles of their collective bargaining agreement next week.

“Hiring is down 50% since 2010, promotions are down 25%, and staffing is at a 25-year low,” she said. “Management has assigned workers to intake for most of the work week, so back-end work is now piling up, and managers are resorting to bullying tactics like leveraging leave, micromanagement and surveilling employees’ use of the bathroom to attempt to control back- and front-end productivity of workers . . . Employees are being treated like disposable cogs in a machine, and when an employee burns out and quits, the agency just seeks to replace them.” ...

LaPointe said that the union’s internal survey found that 8% of respondents knew a coworker who died by suicide at least in part due to work-related stress. ...

Edwin Osorio, first vice president of AFGE Council 220, said at least part of the blame can be placed at the feet of Kijakazi, who he said has shown a lack of leadership while atop the agency. ...