SOCIAL SECURITY 

ADMINISTRATION

Continuing Leadership 

Focus Needed to 

Modernize How SSA Does 

Business

Statement of Elizabeth Curda, Director

Education, Workforce, and Income Security

Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on Social 

Security, Committee on Ways and 

Means, House of Representatives

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 10:00 a.m. ET

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

GAO-18-432T

United States Government Accountability Office
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-18-432T, a testimony 

before the Subcommittee on Social Security, 

Committee on Ways and Means, House of 

Representatives

March 7, 2018

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

Continuing Leadership Focus Needed to Modernize 

How SSA Does Business

What GAO Found

GAO’s prior work and Social Security Administration’s (SSA) strategic plan for 

fiscal years 2018-2022 highlight significant demographic and technological 

challenges facing the agency. For example, SSA’s workloads are increasing due 

to 80 million baby boomers entering their disability-prone and retirement years,

and institutional knowledge and leadership at SSA will be depleted due to an

expected 21,000 employees retiring by the end of fiscal year 2022. GAO’s prior 

work has identified related management challenges and opportunities for SSA to 

further modernize and improve its disability programs, service delivery, and 

information technology (IT) systems. 

• Managing disability workloads and program integrity. SSA has long 

struggled to process disability claims and, more recently, appeals of denied 

claims, in a timely manner. Consistent with our 2013 recommendation, SSA 

produced a broad vision for improving service delivery, including ensuring 

prompt and accurate disability decisions. However, SSA is still developing 

concrete plans to implement its vision. Although SSA has initiatives 

underway to improve appeals backlogs, GAO reported that some of SSA’s

appeals initiatives are either contingent on additional funding or have met 

with limited success when tried in the past. GAO’s prior work also identified 

other challenges related to SSA’s disability programs, and actions SSA could 

take, for example, to modernize disability criteria, prevent and recover

overpayments, and manage fraud risks.

• Modernizing physical infrastructure and service delivery. Advances in 

technology have the potential to change how and where SSA delivers its 

services. For example, individuals can now apply for some disability benefits 

online rather than in person. However, GAO found that SSA did not have 

readily available data on problems customers had with online applications or 

why staff support was needed. Additionally, the agency had not established 

performance goals to determine whether new service delivery options, such 

as off-site kiosks, are succeeding. In addition, we found that SSA has not 

developed a long-term plan for its building space that, among other things, 

includes a strategy for downsizing offices to better reflect changes in service 

delivery. We recommended SSA improve building plans and do more to 

assess and monitor service delivery, with which SSA agreed.

• Modernizing information technology. SSA’s legacy IT systems are 

increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain and GAO identified SSA’s 

needed investment in infrastructure operations and maintenance as among

the 10 largest expenditures at federal agencies in fiscal year 2015. GAO

recommended SSA identify and plan to modernize or replace legacy 

systems, in accordance with forthcoming Office of Management and Budget

guidance. SSA agreed, and reported that it is finalizing its Information 

Technology Modernization Plan. 

Continuing focus by SSA leadership is critical to addressing these broad and 

long-term challenges and effectively delivering benefits and services to the many 

Americans who depend on SSA programs.

View GAO-18-432T. For more information, 

contact Elizabeth Curda at (202) 512-7215 or 

curdae@gao.gov.

Why GAO Did This Study

SSA provides vital benefits and 

services that affect the lives of many 

Americans. In fiscal year 2017, it paid 

out nearly $1 trillion in retirement and 

disability benefits to 67 million 

beneficiaries, and an average of 

420,000 people call or visit one of its 

1,200 field offices each day. 

However, SSA has struggled to 

manage its disability workloads, 

maintain program integrity, and 

modernize its service delivery and 

information technology systems. GAO

has issued a number of reports on 

these challenges, and placed SSA’s 

disability programs on GAO’s High 

Risk List, in part due to challenges with 

workloads and claims processing. 

GAO was asked to testify on 

challenges facing SSA. This statement 

summarizes ongoing SSA challenges 

described in SSA’s strategic plan and 

past GAO work in three areas: 1) 

managing disability workloads and 

ensuring program integrity; 2) 

modernizing physical infrastructure and 

service delivery methods; and 3) 

modernizing information technology. 

Although GAO is not making 

recommendations in this statement, 

our prior work included 

recommendations to help SSA address 

these challenges, many of which SSA 

has agreed with and initiated actions

on. SSA provided technical comments 

on a draft of this statement, which we 

incorporated, as appropriate.
Letter

Page 1 GAO-18-432T 

Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Larson, and Members of the 

Subcommittee:

I am pleased to be here to discuss the significant management 

challenges and structural issues currently facing the executive leadership 

of the Social Security Administration (SSA).

SSA is a vast enterprise responsible for providing benefits and services 

that affect nearly every American at some point in their lives. In fiscal year 

2017, SSA paid out nearly $1 trillion in Social Security retirement, 

disability, and Supplemental Security Income benefits to 67 million 

beneficiaries. While the services it provides are vitally important, SSA 

faces significant demographic and technological challenges. For example, 

as SSA noted in its 2018-2022 strategic plan and as we have previously 

reported, SSA is experiencing increasing workloads due to 80 million 

members of the baby boom generation entering their most disabilityprone and retirement years.1,2 At the same time, SSA projects 21,000 of 

its employees will retire by the end of fiscal year 2022, resulting in a loss 

of institutional knowledge and impediments to succession management 

and knowledge transfer. In addition, SSA noted that Americans are 

increasingly relying on technology to access services while information 

technology (IT) advances create opportunities for SSA to use 

substantially different tools and approaches than it has in the past.

We have issued a number of reports with recommendations addressing 

shortcomings in how SSA has addressed these challenges. While SSA 

has agreed with and taken action on many of our recommendations, 

many others remain open, some of which we have suggested to SSA 

should be given high priority.3 In addition, Social Security disability 

programs are on our High Risk List due to persistent workload and other 

challenges with processing disability claims.4 A common theme that cuts 

across these issues is the need to modernize how SSA does business. 

SSA has acknowledged the importance of modernization in its new 

 1 See Social Security Administration, Fiscal Years 2018 – 2022, Agency Strategic Plan.

2 GAO, Social Security Administration: Long-Term Strategy Needed to Address Key 

Management Challenges, GAO-13-459 (Washington, D.C.: May 29, 2013).

3 See appendix I for our February 2018 letter to SSA’s Commissioner, in which we call 

attention to open recommendations that should be given high priority.

4 GAO, High Risk Series: Progress on Many High-Risk Ares, While Substantial Efforts 

Needed on Others, GAO-17-317 (Washington, D.C.: February 15, 2017)

Letter
Page 2 GAO-18-432T 

strategic plan. The actions SSA leadership will need to take to modernize 

the management of disability programs, facility planning and service 

delivery, and information technology will require vision and sustained, 

long-term attention.

My testimony today summarizes the results from a number of our past 

reports on SSA’s operations and will focus on management challenges 

and structural issues facing SSA in three key areas: 1) managing its 

disability workloads and ensuring program integrity; 2) modernizing its 

physical infrastructure and service delivery methods; and 3) modernizing 

its information technology.

In developing this testimony, we relied on reports that we have previously 

issued. These reports, cited throughout this statement, include detailed 

information on the scope and methodology for our reviews.5 The work on 

which this statement is based was conducted in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards 

require that we plan and perform audits to obtain sufficient, appropriate 

evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions. 

We believe that the evidence obtained provided a reasonable basis for 

our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

The scope of SSA’s operations and responsibilities is vast. One of SSA’s 

key responsibilities is to provide financial benefits to eligible individuals 

through three benefit programs:

• Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI)—provides retirement 

benefits to older individuals and their families and to survivors of 

deceased workers.

• Disability Insurance (DI)—provides benefits to eligible individuals who 

have qualifying disabilities, and their eligible family members.

• Supplemental Security Income (SSI)—provides income for aged, 

blind, or disabled individuals with limited income and resources.

 5 We asked SSA to review and provide technical comments on a draft copy of our 

statement, and incorporated SSA’s comments where appropriate.

Background

SSA Programs and 

Functions
Page 3 GAO-18-432T 

In support of its mission, SSA maintains workers’ earnings information 

and in fiscal year 2017 posted over 279 million earnings items to workers’ 

records. SSA also determines if claimants are eligible for benefits, 

completing 10 million claims and more than 680,000 hearings decisions in 

fiscal year 2017. SSA also maintains birth and death records and issues 

Social Security Numbers. In fiscal year 2017, SSA issued almost 17 

million new and replacement Social Security cards.

Beyond administering its programs and core missions, SSA provides key 

administrative support to the Medicare program, partners with the 

Department of Homeland Security in verifying employment eligibility for 

new hires, and assists with the administration of other programs, such as 

the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and programs 

administered by the Railroad Retirement Board.

SSA’s workforce is large, as is its physical footprint. About 62,000 federal 

employees and 15,000 state employees administer SSA programs in 

about 1,500 facilities nationwide. These facilities include regional offices, 

more than 1,200 field offices, teleservice centers, processing centers, 

hearings offices, the Appeals Council offices, and SSA’s headquarters in 

Baltimore, Maryland.

Customers can access SSA services in-person at an SSA field office; by 

phone with field office staff or through a National 800 number; or online.6

In 2018, SSA reported that, each day, about 170,000 people visit and 

250,000 call one of its field offices for various reasons, such as to file 

claims, ask questions, or update their information. SSA also reported that 

its national 800 number handles over 30 million calls each year.

 6 SSA also receives communications from and sends communications to customers by 

mail. For example, in fiscal year 2017, SSA mailed nearly 250 million notices.
Page 4 GAO-18-432T 

Complex eligibility rules and multiple handoffs and potential layers of 

review make SSA’s disability programs complicated and costly to 

administer.7 Program complexity arguably has made it challenging for 

SSA to make significant advances in efficiently managing high disability 

workloads, ensuring timely and consistent disability decisions, preventing 

benefit overpayments, and mitigating fraud risks.

Our recent work highlighted some of the challenges SSA faces in making 

disability decisions that are timely, consistent and based on current 

concepts of disability, while also preventing and deterring fraud and 

ensuring that only beneficiaries who are entitled to benefits receive them. 

These findings underscore the need for SSA leadership to approach 

these challenges strategically and follow through with rigorous plans in 

order to achieve significant improvements in its disability programs.

In recent years, SSA made noteworthy strides in reducing its backlog of 

initial disability claims, but delays in deciding disability appeals continue 

to worsen. SSA has reduced the number of pending claims each fiscal 

year since 2010—from about 842,000 in fiscal year 2010 to about 

523,000 in fiscal year 2017. However, the number of appealed claims 

pending at the end of 2017 was approximately 1.1 million compared to 

about 700,000 in fiscal year 2010, and the average time needed to 

complete appeals increased from 426 days to 605 days during that same 

time.

In our 2017 High Risk Update, we reported that SSA had taken some 

steps to address its growing appeals backlog, such as hiring additional 

administrative law judges (ALJ).8 SSA also published a plan in 2016 to 

improve appeals timeliness that called for further hiring, improving 

business processes, sharing workloads across offices, and making better 

use of IT resources, such as increasing the number of video hearings. 

However, SSA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that many of the 

initiatives in SSA’s plan duplicated past efforts that had met with limited 

 7 SSA field offices and state Disability Determination Services both play a role in initially 

determining eligibility for disability benefits. Claimants who are dissatisfied with their initial 

determination have multiple levels of appeal available to them. We reported in 2013 that, 

although SSA’s disability programs account for only about 23 percent of its total benefit 

outlays for its three benefit programs, they represent 66 percent of the administrative 

expenses.

8

GAO-17-317. 

Challenges to 

Managing SSA’s 

Disability Workloads 

and Ensuring 

Program Integrity

Making Timely Disability 

Decisions
Page 5 GAO-18-432T 

success. SSA also noted that some efforts, such as additional hiring, will

depend on resource availability. We also reported that SSA is still 

developing plans to implement its broad vision for service delivery, Vision 

2025, which addresses SSA’s capacity to provide timely initial claims and 

appeals decisions.9 To address its appeals backlog and position itself to 

effectively provide timely disability decisions at all levels, SSA leadership 

will need to continue to operationalize Vision 2025, plan and implement 

systems support for initial claims, and implement and monitor the success 

of its appeals initiatives.

While SSA has made significant progress in updating the outdated 

occupational and medical criteria it uses to make disability eligibility 

decisions, some of these efforts are multi-year and will require the 

continued focus of top leadership. Most significantly, SSA has made 

strides updating a decades old Dictionary of Occupational Titles with a 

new Occupational Information System (OIS), which contains occupational 

data to make disability determinations.10 SSA expects to have OIS in 

place by 2020, and currently plans to update OIS information every 5 

years thereafter. Regarding the medical criteria used to make disability 

decisions, we reported in our 2017 high risk update that SSA had 

published final rules for nearly all of the 14 body systems for adults and 

was on track to update criteria for all body systems every 3 to 5 years.11

While SSA has addressed all our recommendations in this area, other 

opportunities exist for updating aspects of SSA’s disability decision 

process. For example, SSA officials have acknowledged that the 

vocational rules it uses to determine eligibility may no longer accurately 

reflect the nature and scope of work available in the national economy 

and stated that the agency is conducting a review to determine if changes 

to vocational factors are necessary. Agency leadership will play a key role 

in ensuring SSA pursues these opportunities to further modernize its 

 9 SSA issued its Vision 2025 in response to our 2013 recommendation that SSA should 

prepare for wide-ranging management challenges by developing a long-term strategy for 

service delivery. See GAO-13-459.

10 As part of its disability determination process, SSA may determine whether the 

individual is able to perform past relevant work or any work that exists in the national 

economy. To inform these determinations, SSA uses a Department of Labor database—

known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles—which is an inventory of occupations 

performed in the national economy.

11 GAO-17-317

Modernizing Disability 

Criteria
Page 6 GAO-18-432T 

criteria and devotes appropriate resources to continuously updating its 

occupational and medical criteria on a timely basis.

Our recent work analyzed variation in the rate that different ALJs grant 

disability benefits when claimants appeal an earlier denial, and found that 

SSA’s efforts to monitor the consistency of appeal hearing decisions are 

incomplete. In 2017 after analyzing data on hearings decisions, we 

estimated that the allowance (approval) rate could vary by as much as 46 

percentage points between different judges with respect to a typical 

claim.12 SSA conducts various reviews to monitor the accuracy and 

consistency of ALJ decisions, but SSA has not systematically evaluated 

whether its reviews are effective. SSA has also struggled to sustain all of 

its quality review efforts, in part, because SSA reassigned staff to help 

expedite claims decisions.13 We also reported on shortcomings in SSA’s 

Compassionate Allowance initiative (CAL)—which fast tracks disability 

claims for severe medical conditions that are most likely to be approved—

that could prevent claims from being consistently and accurately identified 

for expedited processing.14 These shortcomings include lacking a 

systematic approach and clear criteria for designating medical conditions 

for inclusion in CAL.

With about one in three beneficiaries being granted benefits at SSA’s 

appeals hearing level, it remains crucial that SSA leadership commit to 

ensuring appeal applications receive fair and consistent treatment, 

 12 A typical claim had average values on all other factors we analyzed (related to the 

claimant, judge, other participants in the process, hearing office, and economic 

characteristics). Our analysis was purely statistical in that we did not conduct the legal 

analysis needed to reach conclusions about what legal factors might have affected a 

judge’s decision or whether the decision that was reached in any particular case was 

correct. Similarly, we were not making any predictions about the correct outcome of future

individual decisions. Each case is unique in both its facts and circumstances and must be 

examined on its own merits. GAO, Social Security Disability: Additional Measures and 

Evaluation Needed to Enhance Accuracy and Consistency of Hearing Decisions, 

GAO-18-37 (Washington, D.C.: December 7, 2017). 

13 In its technical comments on our draft statement, SSA stated that, effective October 1, 

2017, the Acting Commissioner moved offices with responsibilities for oversight of 

disability decisions into the agency’s Office of Analytics, Review, and Oversight, in order 

to use data collected from quality reviews at all levels of adjudication to improve policy 

compliance of disability decisions.

14 GAO, SSA’s Compassionate Allowance Initiative: Improvements Needed to Make 

Expedited Processing of Disability Claims More Consistent and Accurate, GAO-17-625 

(Washington, D.C.: August 11, 2017).

Enhancing the Accuracy 

and Consistency of 

Disability Decisions
Page 7 GAO-18-432T 

including assessing persistent and unexplained variations in ALJ 

allowance rates. Ensuring oversight and scrutiny of SSA’s CAL initiative is 

also essential to avoid potential equity issues with regards to SSA’s most 

vulnerable claimants.

Benefit overpayments represent avoidable losses to the DI trust fund and, 

for the individual who may have incurred an overpayment despite 

conscientiously reporting wages, a financial hardship when required to 

repay and a disincentive to pursue work. In fiscal year 2015, the most 

recent year for which we have data, SSA identified $1.2 billion in new 

overpayments in its DI program, and had $6.3 billion in total overpayment 

debt outstanding. In 2015, we reported that the SSA process for 

beneficiaries to report earnings (and consequently inform whether they 

remain eligible for DI benefits) had a number of weaknesses, including 

staff not following established procedures, limited oversight, and a lack of 

automated reporting options for beneficiaries, such as an automated 

telephone system or smart phone app.15 SSA has made progress 

expanding electronic work reporting, but these efforts will not eliminate 

vulnerabilities caused by SSA’s multi-faceted processes for receiving and 

handling work reports, and will require additional management focus to 

shore up internal controls and avoid unnecessary overpayments.

Once overpayments do occur, SSA will endeavor to recover those 

overpayments. However, we recently found that the collection of 

overpayment debts warrants more attention than SSA has demonstrated 

to date. In 2016, we reported that SSA’s largest source of debt recovery 

is withholding a portion of beneficiaries’ monthly benefits payments.16

However, we found that amounts withheld may not consistently reflect 

individuals’ ability to pay, and that many repayment plans could take 

decades to complete. We recommended SSA improve oversight and 

pursue additional debt recovery options—recommendations that SSA has 

yet to implement. Absent clear policies and oversight procedures for 

establishing and reviewing withholding plans—SSA’s main tool for 

recovering overpayments—SSA cannot be sure that beneficiaries are 

repaying debts in appropriate amounts within appropriate time frames. 

 15 GAO, Disability Insurance: SSA Could Do More to Prevent Overpayments or Incorrect 

Waivers, GAO-16-34 (Washington, D.C.: October 29, 2015).

16 GAO, Disability Insurance: SSA Needs to Better Track Efforts and Evaluate Options to 

Recover Debt and Deter Potential Fraud, GAO-16-331 (Washington, D.C.: April 13, 2016). 

Preventing and Collecting 

Overpayments
Page 8 GAO-18-432T 

Further, by not implementing additional debt collection tools that would 

speed up repayment, which can extend past the beneficiaries’ lifetimes

and is diminished in value by inflation, SSA is missing opportunities to 

restore debts owed to the DI trust fund.

Although the extent of fraud in SSA’s benefit programs is unknown, highprofile cases—such as one case reported by SSA’s OIG involving 70 

individuals and $14 million in fraudulent benefits—underscore the 

importance of continued vigilance on the part of SSA leadership in 

managing fraud risks to prevent fraud. We reported in 2017 that SSA 

established a new office responsible for coordinating antifraud programs 

across the agency, and had taken steps to gather information on some 

fraud risks.17 However, we also found that SSA had not fully assessed its 

fraud risks, had not developed an overall antifraud strategy to align its 

efforts with those risks, and did not have a complete set of metrics to 

determine whether its antifraud efforts are effective. SSA has already 

taken action on one of our recommendations by producing a fraud risk 

assessment, which we will evaluate, and has stated its intent to take 

action on our other recommendations. Nevertheless, leadership will be 

essential for developing and implementing an antifraud strategy aligned 

with the risk assessment and ensuring that SSA’s efforts to prevent and 

detect fraud are effective, thereby helping to safeguard the integrity of its 

programs and its delivery of benefits to only eligible individuals.

With one of the largest physical footprints of any federal agency, and in 

light of rising facility costs, SSA may be able to achieve efficiencies by 

reducing the size of its footprint and pursuing additional, cost effective 

service delivery options. However, as we reported in 2013, rightsizing 

SSA’s physical infrastructure can be complex, politically charged, and 

costly; expanding service delivery options is also challenging due to the 

complexity of SSA’s disability programs and the varying needs of SSA’s 

customers.18 Our recent review of SSA’s plans to reconfigure its physical 

footprint and expand how it delivers services confirmed a number of 

 17 GAO, SSA Disability Benefits: Comprehensive Strategic Approach Needed to Enhance 

Antifraud Activities, GAO-17-228 (Washington, D.C.: April 17, 2017).

18 GAO-13-459.

Strategic Approach to 

Managing Fraud Risks

Challenges to 

Modernizing SSA’s 

Physical Footprint 

and Service Delivery
Page 9 GAO-18-432T 

challenges SSA must navigate.19 It also highlighted the importance of 

approaching these challenges strategically and systematically, through 

strong leadership that guides robust planning, data collection, and 

assessment efforts.

In our 2017 work, we identified several challenges that could hinder 

SSA’s ability to readily reconfigure its footprint, align it with evolving 

needs and potentially achieve desirable cost savings.20 For example, we 

found that despite progress reducing its square footage and the number 

of occupied buildings, SSA’s inflation-adjusted rental costs have 

remained steady. SSA’s ability to further reduce or enlarge its physical 

space is constrained by rental markets, and by union and community 

concerns. According to SSA officials, high rents, limited building stock 

and complicated federal leasing processes present difficulties and 

community needs and union concerns may further complicate relocating 

offices. We also found that, even though SSA is expanding its remote 

delivery of services—online and through new technologies—overall 

demand for field office services has not decreased, although demand 

varied greatly across SSA’s offices.

Expansion of online service—such as the SSI application, which became 

available online in 2017—present opportunities for SSA to further reduce 

or reconfigure its physical footprint. However SSA may miss those 

opportunities because we found that SSA had not fully integrated its 

strategic planning and facility planning, despite leading practices that 

indicate facility plans should align with an agency’s strategic goals and 

objectives.21 We recommended that SSA develop a long-term facility plan 

that explicitly links to its strategic goals for service delivery, and includes 

a strategy for consolidating or downsizing field offices in light of 

increasing use of and geographic variation in remote service delivery. 

 19 GAO, Social Security Administration: Improvements Needed in Facilities Planning and 

Service Delivery Evaluation, GAO-17-597 (Washington, D.C.: July 25, 2017).

20 GAO, Social Security Administration: Improvements Needed in Facilities Planning and 

Service Delivery Evaluation, GAO-17-597(Washington, D.C.: July 25, 2017).

21 We recommended in 2013 that SSA determine if realigning its facilities structure, 

including field offices, could yield increases in the agency’s effectiveness and efficiency by

assessing the utility and feasibility of such a realignment or consolidation. At the time, 

SSA officials said they would begin exploring their office structure to find ways to increase 

efficiency and effectiveness; however, as of May 2017, this recommendation remains 

unimplemented. See GAO-13-459.

Reconfiguring SSA’s 

Physical Footprint
Page 10 GAO-18-432T 

SSA agreed with our recommendation, and has since formed a Space 

Acquisition Review Board to consider space reductions in light of 

operational changes. SSA executive leadership will remain an important 

factor in ensuring a concerted effort to align the agency’s physical 

footprint with its vision for future service delivery.

Our recent work also found that while the complexity of SSA’s programs 

can make it challenging for customers to use online services, the agency 

lacked data to identify and address challenges with online applications. 

The online disability applications in particular can be confusing and 

challenging for customers to complete, according to many SSA managers 

and staff we interviewed.22 Applications that are submitted online often 

require follow-up contacts with applicants to obtain missing information, 

according to SSA front-line staff. However, while SSA has taken steps to 

make its online services more user-friendly, such as adding a click-to-chat 

function for customers who run into problems, the agency does not 

routinely collect data on the reasons for staff follow-ups with online 

applicants. Such data are critical to SSA’s efforts to further improve its 

online applications and ultimately allow SSA to shift more of its business 

online and further reconfigure its physical footprint.

SSA would also benefit from establishing performance goals to help it 

determine whether new service delivery options are succeeding. To help 

address access challenges such as limited broadband internet in some 

rural areas, SSA has rolled out self-service personal computers in field

offices, icons to link to SSA services on computers in public libraries and 

video services accessed from senior centers. SSA also recently 

completed a trial of customer service kiosks in seven SSA offices and 

third-party locations. SSA staff in field offices reported some positive 

impacts from these initiatives in terms of extending remote access to 

certain populations, but also cited challenges, such as with customers’ 

varying ability to use self-service computers. While SSA collects some 

data on usage, it has not developed performance targets or goals that 

could help it assess these initiatives’ success or identify problems.

We recommended that SSA develop a cost-effective approach to 

identifying the most common issues with online benefit claims, and 

 22 According to a survey conducted by SSA, the most common reason that applicants 

started but failed to complete a disability application online was that they did not 

understand what the questions meant. See GAO-17-597.

Expanding Remote 

Service Delivery
Page 11 GAO-18-432T 

develop performance goals and collect performance data for alternate 

service delivery approaches. SSA agreed with our recommendations, and 

has since reported taking steps to implement them. As SSA continues to 

expand its service delivery options, the agency’s leadership will need to 

encourage data driven approaches to ensure high quality and effective 

alternative service delivery.

In 2016, we reported that SSA faces challenges with IT planning and 

management, based on over a decade of prior work that identified 

weaknesses in system development practices, IT governance, 

requirements management, strategic planning, and other aspects of IT.23

For example, in 2012, a GAO review reported that SSA did not have an 

updated IT strategic plan to guide its efforts and its enterprise architecture 

lacked important content that would have allowed the agency to more 

effectively plan its IT investments.24 In addition, SSA and others have 

reported substantial difficulty in the agency’s ability to implement its 

Disability Case Processing System—intended to replace 54 disparate 

systems used by state Disability Determination Services—citing software 

quality and poor system performance as issues. Consequently, in June 

2016, the initiative was placed on the Office of Management and Budget’s 

(OMB) government-wide list of 10 high-priority programs requiring 

attention. In February 2018, the SSA OIG completed an assessment of 

an independent contractor’s analysis of options for the system. The SSA 

OIG concluded that several factors that limited the analysis supporting the 

contractor’s recommendation for SSA to continue investing in a new, 

custom-build version of the Disability Case Processing System.

25

Because OMB is no longer identifying high-priority programs, in 

November 2017, we recommended OMB resume identifying these 

programs.26 We also recommended OMB ensure that the Federal Chief 

 23 GAO, Social Security Administration: Effective Planning and Management Practices Are 

Key to Overcoming IT Modernization Challenges, GAO-16-815T (Washington, D.C.: July 

14, 2016).

24 GAO, Social Security Administration: Improved Planning and Performance Measures 

Are Needed to Help Ensure Successful Technology Modernization, GAO-12-495 

(Washington, D.C.: April 26, 2012).

25 SSA OIG, Contractor’s Market Research and Analysis for the Disability Case 

Processing System, A-14-18-50506 (February 5, 2018).

26 GAO, Information Technology: OMB Needs to Report On and Improve Its Oversight of 

the Highest Priority Programs, GAO-18-51 (Washington, D.C.: November 21, 2017). 

Challenges to 

Modernizing 

Information 

Technology
Page 12 GAO-18-432T 

Information Officer is directly involved in overseeing these high-priority 

programs as past experience has shown that this oversight could improve 

accountability and achieve positive results. OMB neither agreed nor 

disagreed with our recommendations, and has not indicated whether it

will take action on these recommendations.

Beyond the challenges identified in these previous reports, GAO’s May 

2016 report on federal agencies’ IT legacy systems highlighted the 

increasing costs that agencies, including SSA, may face as they continue 

to operate and maintain at-risk legacy systems.27 We identified SSA’s 

investment in IT infrastructure operations and maintenance as being 

among the 10 largest expenditures of federal agencies in fiscal year 

2015. Further, we pointed out that legacy systems may become 

increasingly expensive as agencies have to deal with issues such as 

obsolete parts and unsupported hardware and software, and potentially 

have to pay a premium to hire staff or engage contractors with the 

knowledge to maintain outdated systems. For example, SSA reported rehiring retired employees to maintain its systems that include many 

programs written in Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL).28

We highlighted a group of systems for determining retirement benefits 

eligibility and amounts which were over 30 years old, with some written in 

COBOL. We also noted that the agency had ongoing efforts to modernize 

the systems but was experiencing cost and schedule challenges due to 

the complexity of the legacy systems. We recommended that the agency 

identify and plan to modernize or replace legacy systems, in accordance 

with forthcoming OMB guidance.29 SSA agreed, and reported that it is 

finalizing its Information Technology Modernization Plan.

To its credit, SSA has made progress in consolidating and optimizing its 

data centers. Specifically, in August 2017, we reported that, as of 

February 2017, SSA was one of only two agencies that had met three of 

 27 GAO, Information Technology: Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy 

Systems, GAO-16-468 (Washington, D.C.: May 25, 2016). 

28 COBOL is a programming language developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The 

Gartner Group, a leading IT research and advisory company, has reported that 

organizations using COBOL should consider replacing the language, as procurement and 

operating costs will steadily rise, and because there is a decrease in people available with 

the proper skill sets.

29 See GAO-16-468.
Page 13 GAO-18-432T 

the five data optimization targets established by OMB30 pursuant to 

provisions referred to as the Federal Information Technology Acquisition 

Reform Act.31 Meeting these targets increases SSA’s ability to improve its 

operational efficiency and achieve cost savings.

In conclusion, many of the challenges facing SSA today are neither new

nor fleeting because they are inherent in the complexity and massive size 

of SSA’s programs and the scope of broad demographic and societal 

changes over time. Our past work has pointed to the need for rigorous 

solutions to these complex problems, such as strategic planning, 

evaluation efforts, measuring for impact, and leveraging data—solutions 

that invariably require leadership attention and sustained focus.

Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Larson, and Members of the 

Subcommittee, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be 

pleased to respond to any questions that you or other members of the 

Subcommittee may have.

If you or your staff have any questions about this testimony, please 

contact Elizabeth Curda, Director, Education Workforce and Income 

Security Issues, at (202) 512-7215 or curdae@gao.gov. Contact points 

for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be 

found on the last page of this testimony statement. GAO staff who made 

key contributions to this statement are Michele Grgich (Assistant 

Director), Daniel Concepcion (Analyst-in-Charge), Susan Aschoff, Alex 

Galuten, Jean McSween, Sheila McCoy, Lorin Obler, Sabine Paul, 

Almeta Spencer, and Erin McLaughlin Villas.

 30 OMB, Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI), Memorandum M-16-19 (Washington, 

D.C.: August 1, 2016).

31 GAO, Data Center Optimization: Agencies Need to Address Challenges and Improve 

Progress to Achieve Cost Savings Goals, GAO-17-448 (Washington, D.C.: August 15, 

2017). The five OMB optimization targets are 1) server utilization and automated 

monitoring, 2) energy metering, 3) power usage effectiveness, 4) facility utilization, and 5) 

virtualization.

GAO Contact and 

Acknowledgements
Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

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Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement
Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

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Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

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Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

Page 17 GAO-18-432T 
Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

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Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

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Appendix I: GAO Letter to SSA on Priority 

Recommendations to Implement

Page 20 GAO-18-432T (102643)
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