Social Security Administration: Better Planning Needed to Improve Service Delivery
Released: 2010-04-15T00:00:00

Letter

Background

SSA offers a range of services, which includes providing financial assistance to eligible individuals through the following three major benefit programs: Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI)—provides benefits to older workers and their families and to survivors of deceased workers.

Disability Insurance (Disability)—provides benefits to eligible workers 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.

In fiscal year 2009, these three benefit programs provided a combined total of approximately $704 billion in benefit payments to nearly 59 million beneficiaries. SSA projects that the benefit payments and number of beneficiaries for the three programs will increase in fiscal year 2010.

Besides paying benefits through these three programs, SSA issues Social Security cards, maintains earnings records, and performs various other functions through a network of field office and headquarters operations using an administrative budget of over $10 billion. SSA’s field operations consist of: field offices, which serve as the agency’s primary points for face-to-face contact; Social Security Card Centers, which issue original Social Security numbers, and replacement Social Security cards; Teleservice Centers, which offer national, toll-free telephone service; and Program Service Centers, which make entitlement decisions for benefits, as well as assist in answering 800-number calls.

Field offices are located in communities across the United States, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam, delivering services through face-to- face contact, over the phone, and through the mail. Field offices range in size from large urban offices with 50 or more employees to very small offices in remote areas called resident stations. SSA currently has 1,259 field offices, 8 Social Security Card Centers, and 29 resident stations. Resident stations have more limited services, and are staffed by one or two individuals. Field offices also offer services to the public through 571 contact stations. These stations provide very limited functions and are staffed with one SSA field office employee who travels once a month to certain locations, such as a hospital, to provide service to customers who lack transportation or telephone access. Additionally, SSA has begun using video conferencing to take claims and provide other services to customers in remote locations. Forty-one field offices are currently using video conferencing to provide service to customers and SSA is preparing to roll- out video conferencing to 80 additional offices. SSA also has a separate video service project in the Denver region to help service geographically diverse areas and provide tribal outreach.

In addition to field offices, SSA offers customers a variety of other options for conducting their business. Individuals may call SSA’s toll-free helpline to file for benefits or to obtain general information. They also may use the Internet to file for benefits, or visit a Social Security Card Center to request a Social Security card.

While SSA field offices take applications and determine if claimants meet basic, nonmedical eligibility requirements for benefits, state Disability Determination Services (DDS) that are under contract with SSA make medical eligibility determinations for Disability and SSI claims. SSA’s Hearing Offices and Appeals Council make decisions on appeals of these determinations. DDSs also conduct continuing disability reviews for Disability and SSI beneficiaries to ensure that individuals are still medically eligible for payments. For beneficiaries found eligible for disability benefits, SSA periodically conducts disability reviews (CDR) of beneficiaries’ earnings and work activity to determine if they are still financially eligible to receive Disability benefits. SSA refers to these reviews as “work CDRs.” SSA also conducts periodic reviews to determine if SSI beneficiaries are still eligible to receive SSI payments based on the beneficiary’s income, living arrangement, and other non- medical factors related to SSI—these reviews are referred to as SSI redeterminations. One type of redetermination is a limited issue review, which does not require a full review of eligibility.

Recent Hiring Has Helped Field Offices Manage Growing Claims Workloads, but Work Quality and Customer Service Have Declined

Since we last examined service at SSA field offices, SSA has expanded the level of staffing, and encouraged greater use of automated services. However, rapidly rising workloads have adversely affected customer service and the quality of some work, despite SSA’s efforts.

Increases to Field Office Staffing Since Fiscal Year 2008 Has Helped Field Offices to Meet Growing Claims Workloads

Field office staffing stayed about the same from fiscal year 2005 through 2009, despite recent hiring, while the amount of work that field offices produced increased by 2.1 percent (see table 1). As a result of greater efficiency, the average amount of work produced by field office employees increased by 2.6 percent from fiscal year 2005 to 2009. In fiscal years 2008 and 2009, SSA hired a combined number of 4,931 staff for field offices, which helped to almost restore field offices to their fiscal year 2005 staffing level. The additional staffing helped to nearly erase field office staffing reductions in fiscal years 2006 and 2007. In our January 2009 report, we reported that field office staffing declined by 4.4 percent from fiscal years 2005 through 2008, but the amount of work that field offices produced had decreased by only 1.3 percent.

Increases in SSA’s fiscal year 2008 and 2009 budget appropriations and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funding enabled SSA to provide more staffing resources to field offices. Table 2 shows SSA’s final appropriations for fiscal years 2002 through 2009. The table also shows the changes in recent staffing.

According to SSA officials, SSA plans to maintain field office staffing levels in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 by providing for a 1:1 replacement rate for staff who leave the agency. SSA is planning to use its fiscal year 2010 and 2011 funding to increase staffing in state DDS offices and SSA hearing offices to reduce disability backlogs; the Commissioner has identified reducing the appeals hearing backlog for disability cases as the agency’s top priority.

The demand for field office service and claims workloads has grown to record levels. Comparing fiscal years 2006 and 2009, visitor volume increased by about 3.2 million customers, from 41.9 million to 45.1 million. If the visitor volume during the second half of fiscal year 2010 is the same as the volume during the first half, the volume will again be 45.1 million by the end of the fiscal year. Also, from fiscal year 2005 through 2009, SSA processed a growing number of OASI, Disability, and SSI claims (nonmedical determinations only), which SSA attributes to the onset of the baby boom generation’s retirements and the economic downturn (see fig. 1).

SSA Has Used Several Different Strategies to Manage Growing Workloads

Even with the increases in field office staffing in fiscal years 2008 and 2009, and some increases in average productivity by employees, many field office managers, responding to a survey conducted in February 2010 by the National Council of Social Security Management Association, Inc. (NCSSMA), stated that staffing levels are inadequate to deal with the growing public service challenges they face daily in field offices. In this survey, over 95 percent of the managers said that they need to hire at least one more employee to provide adequate public service, 89.2 percent said they need at least two more employees, and 71.2 percent said that they need at least three more employees.

SSA continues to use various strategies to manage work in field offices, such as shifting work among field offices, based on their workloads, encouraging customers to make greater use of automated services, and deferring certain field office work. For example, if an office has work demands that it cannot immediately cover, that office can request that some work be transferred to another office. SSA is also encouraging customers to use automated services. SSA reported that in fiscal years 2008 and 2009, respectively, the public performed 4.0 million and 6.1 million electronic transactions. SSA reported that electronic filings for retirement benefits grew from approximately 407,000 to 833,000 from fiscal year 2008 to 2009, respectively; this represented 18.9 percent and 32.2 percent of the total retirement applications filed in fiscal years 2008 and 2009. As result, SSA is making progress toward achieving the goal it set in its fiscal year 2008 Agency Strategic Plan to achieve an online filing rate of 50 percent of retirement applications by 2012.

With regard to deferring work, SSA has deferred a significant number of SSI redeterminations since fiscal year 2003. Although SSA increased the number of SSI redeterminations in fiscal year 2009 above the 2008 level, the number of reviews remains significantly below the fiscal year 2003 level. Specifically, SSA conducted about 719,000 or 30 percent fewer SSI redeterminations in fiscal year 2009 than it did in fiscal year 2003. However, if SSA completes the number of SSI redeterminations it is projecting for fiscal year 2010, it will be close to the fiscal year 2003 level. Further, the Congress has stated that it is concerned about delays in processing work-related CDRs. Our data show that SSA increased work- related CDRs from about 106,500 in fiscal year 2003 to about 175,600 in fiscal year 2006. However, the number of work CDRs has decreased slightly since 2006, and SSA projects that it will conduct about 174,200 work CDRs in fiscal year 2010 (see fig. 2).

Reviews of continuing eligibility are key activities in ensuring that benefits are paid only to those individuals entitled to them. A fiscal year 2008 Supplemental Security Income Stewardship Report showed the correlation between the number of SSI redeterminations conducted and the overpayment accuracy rate. The data showed that as the number of SSI redeterminations and limited issue reviews decreased, the overpayment accuracy rate for SSI payments declined from 93.6 percent in fiscal year 2005 to 89.7 percent in fiscal year 2008, the lowest level in over 30 years. The report stated that the primary reason for overpayment inaccuracies is failure of SSI recipients and their representative payees to report changes that affect payment, such as changes in income and resources. SSA estimates that CDRs yield a lifetime savings of about $10 for every dollar invested, while SSI redeterminations save $8 over 10 years for every dollar invested.

Pressures to Meet Increased Workload Demands May Have Contributed to Adverse Effects on Field Office Operations

Pressures on field office staff to meet increased workload demands may have adversely affected the quality of some work. According to the 2010 NCSSMA report, 87.4 percent of survey respondents reported that they receive complaints weekly from the public about the accuracy or timeliness of the work being produced, and 82.5 percent reported that the number of quality case reviews performed in their office is insufficient to ensure an accurate and timely work product. Also, although the percentage of customers rating SSA service favorably (excellent, very good, or good) has remained stable at 81 percent since fiscal year 2007, the rating has declined from its fiscal year 2005 level of 85 percent, and continues to fall short of the agency’s 83 percent goal.

Pressures on field office staff may have also contributed to a further decline in customers’ satisfaction with field office service than in previous years. According to SSA’s fiscal year 2008/2009 field office caller survey, 58 percent of callers got a busy signal or a recording that lines were busy when they called field offices—up from 45 percent in fiscal year 2007, and 55 percent in fiscal year 2008. Because SSA based its results only on customers who were ultimately able to get through to the field offices, the actual percentage of customers that had unanswered calls was likely higher. The decline in field office phone service is further evidenced by results of the 2010 NCSSMA report—64.6 percent of managers said that they were able to provide prompt telephone service less than half the time; virtually all of the managers (98.1 percent) reported that they receive weekly complaints about telephone service provided by their office; and another 67.8 percent of survey respondents said that the increased volume of visitors coming into their office is due in moderate or large part to the inability of their office to provide prompt telephone service. SSA has undertaken efforts to improve telephone service in field offices. SSA initiated a pilot program in 2007 called “Forward on Busy” in 25 field offices to address deficiencies with phone service. SSA has since converted the pilot into a regular program, and 147 offices are participating. Under the program, calls receiving a busy signal at field offices are automatically forwarded to a Teleservice Center. In another effort to improve its telephone service, SSA awarded a $300 million contract to build a Voice over Internet Protocol telephone system for field operations. This system will allow SSA to fully integrate its telephone system and data network, which will provide for faster call routing to any geographic location, and quicker access to caller information.

While SSA made some improvements in customer waiting times in fiscal year 2009, SSA data show that the number of customers waiting for over 2 hours remained about the same. Compared to fiscal year 2008 waiting times, SSA increased the number of customers who waited from 0-60 minutes from 92.1 percent to 92.5 percent; decreased the number of customers who waited for 61-120 minutes from 6.8 percent to 6.6 percent; and remained about the same (1 percent) for customers who waited for more than 2 hours (see table 3).

In our January 2009 report, we recommended that SSA establish standards for field office customer waiting times and phone service to help identify and improve offices with poor service. SSA did not act on this recommendation stating that it would create problems by diverting staff already spread thin across field offices.

SSA Has Not Developed a Plan to Describe How It will Address Future Service Delivery Challenges

SSA has not yet offered a plan to detail how it will continue to do more work with fewer resources and achieve its strategic goals. In our 2009 report and prior reports, we recommended that SSA develop a service delivery plan to outline how it would deliver quality service while managing growing work demands and limited resources. SSA partially agreed with our recommendation, stating that it had a number of documents, including its strategic plan, which discusses how it will meet future service delivery needs. However, because of a continuing concern about the agency’s lack of a consolidated plan to address service and staffing, SSA agreed to develop a single document to describe its plan for addressing future service delivery challenges. SSA officials did not provide us with an update on where the agency stood in developing this plan.

With projected increases to SSA’s workload from retirement and disability filings from the nation’s baby boom generation, and a continued wave of retirements of experienced staff, the need for such a plan is greater than ever. For fiscal years 2010 through 2017, SSA projects that the agency will consistently have workloads of approximately 11 million claims (see fig. 3), which is significantly higher than the workloads processed during fiscal years 2005 through 2008, as previously noted in figure 1.

As we stated in our January 2009 report, it will be more difficult for SSA to meet higher workload challenges as a result of the anticipated retirement of many of the agency’s most experienced field office workers. Based on SSA’s projections, 22 percent of SSA’s current workforce will retire by fiscal year 2013, and the figure will grow to 41 percent by fiscal year 2018. SSA’s projections show that a significant portion of the losses will come from supervisory staff, who are among the agency’s most experienced staff. For example, SSA projects that 38 percent of supervisory staff are eligible to retire now, 54 percent will be eligible in five years, and 66 percent will be eligible in 10 years. It will take years for SSA to rebuild the decades of knowledge that will be lost from these retirements. Field office managers and staff we spoke to told us that it typically takes 2 to 3 years for new employees to become fully proficient. Given this, SSA is likely to experience declines in productivity as new staff replace more experienced staff. Therefore, SSA will need to do more to compensate for such declines.

Concluding Observations

While SSA is managing increasing workloads resulting from growing retirement and disability claims, it still faces the challenge of providing quality service. SSA’s management of increased workloads came at a cost—the accuracy rate for SSI overpayments fell to the lowest level in 30 years, and some customer service continues to decline. These problems may become more severe as workloads continue to grow from the nation’s baby boom generation, waves of SSA’s most experienced staff retire, and the current level of field office staffing stays flat. Such challenges make it essential for SSA to develop a plan to manage its increasing workload. Whether SSA will need more resources or an altered field office infrastructure, or both, is unclear. We still believe that a detailed service delivery plan should make this clear, and if additional resources are needed to achieve agencywide goals, SSA should identify the resources required to meet long-term service delivery needs.

Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to respond to any questions you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have at this time.

Contacts and Acknowledgment

For further questions about this statement, please contact Barbara D. Bovbjerg at (202) 512-7215 or bovbjergb@gao.gov. Individuals making key contributions to this statement included Blake Ainsworth, Mary Crenshaw, Paul Wright, and Charlie Willson.

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