Social Security Administration Field Offices: Reduced Workforce Faces Challenges as Baby Boomers Retire
Released: 2008-05-08T00:00:00

Letter

Background

Almost all Americans have sought the services of SSA at some point in their lives, and for many, their first experience is applying for a Social Security number (SSN). 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 retired workers and their families and to survivors of deceased workers; Disability Insurance (DI) provides benefits to eligible workers who have qualifying disabilities, and their eligible family members; and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides income for aged, blind, or disabled individuals with limited income and resources.

In fiscal year 2007, these three benefit programs provided a combined total of approximately $613 billion to about 54 million beneficiaries. SSA projects that the benefit payments and number of beneficiaries for the three programs will increase in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 (see tables 1 and 2).

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, perform a full range of services, including making eligibility determinations for Social Security benefits; Social Security Card Centers, which issue SSNs; 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 toll-free calls.

Table 3 shows the type of work that is performed by various SSA field components.

Field offices, which served approximately 42 million customers in fiscal year 2007, are a vital component for delivering SSA services to the public. Field offices are located in communities across the United States, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and deliver 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. In August 2007, there were approximately 1,271 field offices and 37 resident stations. Resident stations have more limited services and are staffed by one or two individuals in their homes or in a separate office (other than an SSA field office). Field offices also offer services to the public through about 1,200 contact stations. These stations provide very limited functions and are staffed with one SSA field office employee who travels to certain locations, such as a hospital, once a month. Additionally, SSA has begun using video conferencing to take claims and provide other services to customers in remote locations in North Dakota, Wyoming, and South Dakota. SSA is planning to expand the video network to provide additional sites and services.

While SSA field offices take applications and determine if claimants meet basic, nonmedical eligibility requirements for DI and SSI disability claims, state Disability Determination Services (DDS) that are under contract with SSA make medical eligibility determinations for these claims. SSA’s Hearing Offices and Appeals Council make decisions on appeals of these determinations. Appendix II describes the functions of each of these entities in the medical disability determination process for DI and SSI claims. DDSs also conduct continuing disability reviews for DI and SSI beneficiaries to ensure that they are still medically eligible for payments.

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 may also use the Internet to file for benefits or visit a Social Security Card Center to request a Social Security card. Figure 1 shows the various options by which customers may conduct their business with SSA.

Field Offices Largely Met Work Demands with Fewer Staff, but Staffing Reductions May Have Contributed to Some Adverse Effects

Despite operating with fewer staff from fiscal year 2005 to 2007 and an increased demand for services, field offices largely met work demands; however, staffing reductions may have contributed to some adverse effects. SSA and its field offices used various strategies to manage work demands, such as sharing work among offices, redirecting staff to serve critical needs outside of their usual responsibilities, encouraging customer use of the internet and telephone services, and deferring certain work. Despite these efforts, many field office managers and staff stated that they cannot keep up with their work. Reduced field office staffing may have contributed to customers waiting longer to be served, and customer calls to field offices are not always being answered. These factors may have contributed to a 4 percent drop in SSA’s customer satisfaction rating between fiscal years 2005 and 2007. In addition, staff are experiencing high stress levels, lacking sufficient time for training, and facing other adverse effects according to field office managers and staff.

Increased Staff Productivity Helped Minimize Potential Impact of Staffing Decline

Despite a 7.1 percent staffing decline during fiscal years 2005 to 2007, the amount of work that field offices produced decreased by only 2.5 percent. As a result, the average amount of work produced by field office staff increased by 4.9 percent between fiscal years 2005 and 2007 (see table 4). The field office staffing reduction comprised nearly 60 percent of SSA’s overall reduction (from 65,112 to 61,594 between fiscal years 2005 and 2007).

SSA officials attribute the staffing reductions to inadequate appropriations and are concerned about growth in work required for other federal agencies. Table 5 shows the Commissioner’s and the President’s budget requests and SSA’s final appropriations for fiscal years 2002 to 2008. The table also shows the recent staffing decline. The table does note that SSA received a $500 million budget increase in 2005 to manage the implementation of the Medicare Prescription Drug program and hire associated staff. In addition, other work that SSA conducts on behalf of other federal agencies has grown. For example, new state laws requiring federal government verification of work authorization are resulting in additional work and field office visits associated with the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program.

Despite the staffing reductions, field offices served are serving a growing volume of visitors. Comparing the first 3 months of calendar years 2006 to 2008, visitor volume increased by almost 450,000 (about 4 percent). SSA field managers and staff told us that they also expect visitor volume to increase with the retirement of the baby boomers. As figure 2 shows, from fiscal years 2005 to 2007, SSA processed more OASI claims; post- entitlement actions (other than for continuing eligibility reviews); enumerations; and Medicare actions. During the same time period, SSA processed fewer DI and SSI claims (nonmedical determinations only); continuing disability reviews; and SSI redeterminations. SSA attributes the high volume of post-entitlement actions to the growth in beneficiary populations.

SSA Used Various Strategies to Manage Staffing Declines

SSA is shifting work among field offices based on their workloads in an effort to increase overall efficiency. If a field office has work demands that it cannot immediately cover, that office can request that some work be transferred to another office. Offices that have a particular expertise in a certain type of work make themselves available, as they can process it more quickly. Field managers told us, however, that sometimes they are reluctant to share work because the office that receives and processes the work receives numerical credit, which helps an office justify a greater staff level for the future.

Managers are also using claims processing personnel to fill in as necessary to perform the duties typically done by lower-graded employees, and in some cases, even office managers take on the duties of their employees. Such duties include answering the telephone, providing initial services to arriving customers, processing requests for new or replacement Social Security cards, and conducting some administrative duties. While all field office personnel recognize the need to serve visitors, many also told us that such work is taking away from time spent processing claims and managing the office.

SSA is encouraging customers to use automated services to help field offices accomplish their work. However, many field staff said that real gains in the use of automated services will only likely be achieved by future generations of customers. SSA’s vision for its “eService” program is that the public, businesses, and government agencies will be able to conduct all business through secure, electronic channels—thereby increasing the efficiency with which the agency can serve the public. SSA reported that in 2007 the public performed 2.9 million electronic transactions, such as applying for disability benefits or requesting a change of address. SSA’s electronic services are available to the public over the Internet and by telephone, using the voice recognition capabilities of SSA’s toll-free number. While field office staff and managers welcome automated tools that the public can use, some added that relatively few customers use them, and that due to erroneous or missing information in online forms, field staff can lose time having to contact the customers for clarification or more information. While they believe that automated tools should continue to be developed, many managers and staff told us that these tools are not a sufficient to compensate for reduced staffing levels.

Finally, with fewer staff available, SSA focused on field office work it considered essential to its “core workloads,” such as processing new claims for Social Security benefits and issuing Social Security cards, but deferred other types of work. Field office managers and staff told us that certain post entitlement actions are typically delayed or deferred, when an office is under stress, including changes of address, changes to direct deposit information, and reviews to determine beneficiaries’ continuing eligibility for DI and SSI benefits. Reviews of continuing eligibility, however, are key activities in ensuring payment accuracy. SSA estimates that continuing disability reviews yield a lifetime program savings of $10 for every dollar invested, and SSI redeterminations yield a lifetime program savings of $7 for every dollar invested.

In recent years, SSA has not been able to conduct as many reviews as it had planned, citing budget limitations and an increase in core work (see fig. 3). When reviews of benefits are delayed, some beneficiaries may continue to receive benefits when they no longer qualify. While delays in these reviews relieve work pressure, some field managers and staff told us that such delays cause future challenges when staff attempt to obtain necessary documentation over multiple years, and overpayments accrue to the point that beneficiaries have difficulty repaying benefits for which they were not eligible.

Despite SSA’s efforts to manage work with reduced staff, managers responding to a survey conducted in February and March 2007 by the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) stated that many of them are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the work. On average, the managers responding to the survey estimated that they would need a staffing increase of 16.7 percent to provide adequate public service. In the offices we visited, most of the managers also told us that they did not have an adequate number of staff.

Staffing Reductions May Have Contributed to a Buildup of Certain Work, Longer Customer Waiting Times, More Unanswered Customer Calls, and Other Adverse Effects

According to SSA officials, staffing imbalances resulted in a buildup of 1,000 workyears, for work that SSA was not able to complete by the end of fiscal year 2007. SSA projects that the buildup will grow to 4,800 workyears by the end of fiscal year 2009; however, officials said that they are re-evaluating this figure in light of increases in productivity and overtime. Staff reductions may have also led to longer customer waiting times. Between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, the average waiting time to first contact for all customers increased by 40 percent from 15 to 21 minutes (see fig. 4). Nationally, 8 percent of customers—about 3 million people— waited more than 1 hour, which included 420,000 customers who waited more than 2 hours for service in fiscal year 2007 (see table 6). We also found significant variation in waiting times among field offices for customers without appointments. For example, for customers without appointments, more than 300 offices had average waiting times of less than 10 minutes, while 23 offices had average waiting times that exceeded 1 hour in fiscal year 2007. Further, customers without appointments during that period waited more than 1 hour on average at four of the offices we visited. In contrast, customers at the office in Devils Lake, North Dakota, waited on average for less than 1 minute (see table 9). We found that customers with appointments waited significantly less time than those without appointments. For example, SSA reported that 1,214 offices had waiting times of less than 10 minutes for customers with appointments, while only two had waiting times of more than 1 hour.

Insufficient staffing may have also been a factor in poor office phone coverage and other adverse effects on customer service. SSA’s 2006 Field Office Caller Survey found that 51 percent of customer calls to 48 randomly selected field offices went unanswered. Because SSA based its results only on customers who were ultimately able to get through to the field offices, the actual percentage of calls that went unanswered may have been higher. In addition, staff at 13 of the 21 offices we visited characterized their phone service as inadequate, while 2 of these offices did not answer their offices’ phones at all. Employees we interviewed also cited inadequate telephone service as a common customer complaint at 15 offices. In 2007, officials told us they initiated a pilot program called “Forward on Busy” in 25 field offices to address these deficiencies. Under the pilot, calls receiving a busy signal at field offices are automatically forwarded to a Teleservice Center. SSA plans to expand the pilot to a total of 100 field offices. In addition to poor phone service, staff at some of the offices we visited indicated that they now have less time to spend with customers. This limited time potentially could lead to mistakes and limit the ability of staff to ensure that customers fully understand their options and benefits. These factors may have contributed to a 4 percent drop in SSA’s customer satisfaction rating between fiscal years 2005 and 2007.

SSA has not established performance standards for customer waiting times and field office telephone service, nor does the agency measure customer service at individual field offices. Without such standards and measures, SSA has no systematic way of evaluating field office performance, or identifying offices that need improvement. While SSA provides field offices with customer comment cards, at 10 of the 21 offices we visited, officials told us they did not use them, and where the cards were available, the results were not always systematically tabulated.

Work demands and staffing reductions have increased the pressure placed on the field office staff, resulting in higher stress and lower morale, according to field office staff. We asked 153 SSA employees at the 21 offices we visited to rate the stress that they experienced in attempting to complete their work in a timely manner, and 65 percent of those surveyed reported feeling stress to a “great” or “very great” extent on a daily basis. The stress of expanding workloads and staffing constraints was felt most acutely by the office managers, 74 percent of whom described high levels of stress. At many offices, staff indicated that mounting workload pressures have led to cutbacks in the amount of time allocated for training and mentoring new staff. In addition, managers and staff told us that they often do not have time to take their breaks, including lunch. Some staff told us they feel they are letting down their colleagues and feel guilty about taking time off, regardless of whether they use credit hours or annual leave. While these responses may not be indicative of the opinions of the overall field office workforce, they do suggest that increasing demands placed on SSA staff may be diminishing their job satisfaction, potentially with long-term implications for employee retention. SSA officials acknowledged that growing workloads have seriously compromised agency morale and that they have tried to ease the stress on staff by authorizing the use of overtime.

Growth in Work Demands and an Employee Retirement Wave May Pose Serious Challenges for Service Delivery in the Future without a Clear Plan

Retirement and disability filings by the nation’s approximately 80 million baby boomers are projected to significantly increase SSA’s workload, providing additional stress on the field office workforce. SSA estimates a 13 percent rise in claims filed among its three major claims types over the next 10 years, rising from 9.4 million in fiscal year 2008 to 10.7 million in fiscal year 2017 (see fig. 5).

A growth of 22 percent in the number of beneficiaries, from about 49.6 million in calendar year 2007 to about 60.5 million in calendar year 2015, is also projected. By 2050, there will be an estimated total of 95.6 million OASI and DI beneficiaries (see fig. 6).

SSA’s ability to meet its growing workload challenges will be more difficult with the anticipated retirements of many of the agency’s most experienced field office workers. Today, 25 percent of all SSA employees are eligible to retire, and that figure will grow to 39 percent in the next 5 years. Based on the agency’s projections, 44 percent of today’s SSA workforce will retire by 2016. The peak of these retirements began in 2007 and is expected continue into 2009, before starting to decline gradually (see fig. 7). SSA’s projections suggest that the ranks of SSA’s supervisors will be most affected, with 71 percent eligible to retire in the next 10 years. These will be the agency’s most experienced staff, which will mean a loss of decades of institutional knowledge. For 2008 in particular, SSA estimates that it will lose about 2,000 staff to full or early-out retirements. Field office managers and staff at many of the locations we visited stated that it typically takes 2 to 3 years for new employees to become fully proficient. Therefore, staff hired now may not reach full proficiency before the peak of the retirement wave. Also, new hires would benefit from being mentored by veteran employees before the latter retire. As a result of the approximately $150 million that SSA was appropriated above its request in the President’s budget for fiscal year 2008, SSA will hire an additional 3,900 staff for operations. This will include 2,350 new hires for regional and field office operations, almost all of whom will go to field offices. SSA officials stated that the increase in staffing will put the agency back at its fiscal year 2005 staffing level.

SSA has used a variety of strategies to maintain adequate staffing. SSA offers recruitment, relocation, and retention bonuses to individuals with needed skills and considers employees’ private sector experience when computing annual leave. SSA also offers workplace flexibilities to assist workers in balancing work and family. Additionally, SSA uses dual compensation (salary offset) waivers from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to respond to emergency conditions and to hire for certain hard-to-fill positions. For example, SSA was granted a waiver to re- employ federal annuitants who retired under an early-out authority to provide relief in areas affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Further, SSA has developed recruiting efforts that reach out to a broader pool of candidates. For example, SSA began recruiting retired military and disabled veterans in 2002 because of its commitment to helping veterans.

SSA currently lacks a plan to address the mounting service delivery challenges that it faces, though officials told us that they are currently working to finalize the agency’s Annual Strategic Plan, which is expected to address these issues. We recommended, as early as 1993 and most recently in 2000, that the agency develop a plan to meet its responsibilities in the context of resource constraints and other challenges. At that time, we suggested that the plan take into account changing customer needs and expectations; the views of oversight bodies and interest groups; and other future challenges, such as growing workloads. We also specified that the plan should spell out, for the future, who will be providing what type of services and where these services will be made available. In the absence of this kind of overarching strategy, SSA may be unable to effectively marshal its key resources to meet the challenges described above.

Conclusions

Recent staffing declines may have been a factor in reducing field offices’ ability to complete all of their work while providing quality customer service. In managing staffing reductions, customers are waiting longer to be served, their calls to field offices frequently go unanswered, certain stewardship activities are being deferred, and staff are stressed. Projected increases in claims for benefits from the nation’s approximately 80 million baby boomers and a large retirement wave among SSA’s most experienced staff will place additional pressure on field offices, and SSA may find it increasingly difficult to manage without a clear plan for addressing these challenges. SSA is currently working to finalize its Fiscal Year 2008 Annual Strategic Plan. Strategic planning for service delivery and staffing before SSA’s workload grows beyond available resources is essential. In a time of budgetary constraints, thinking creatively about service delivery and how best to operate efficiently and effectively will be important aspects of SSA’s planning effort. The time for SSA to prepare itself for the future is running out and without a clear direction SSA will not be prepared to meet its service delivery challenges.

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

For further information regarding this testimony, please contact Barbara D. Bovbjerg at (202) 512-7215 or bovbjergb@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. Individuals making key contributions to this testimony include Blake Ainsworth (Assistant Director), Mary A. Crenshaw, Paul Wright, Matthew Lee, and Charlie Willson.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided SSA with a draft of our testimony for their comment. In their response, SSA said that the testimony understated the connection between the stress that field offices are under from increased work demands and the agency’s funding shortfalls. SSA stated that its current business model is non-sustainable and that past underfunding has forced the agency to shift resources from less visible—though vital—areas to process the most critical workloads. SSA also said that it is using its current strategic plan and operational plan to meet its many challenges. In order for its plans to succeed, SSA stated that it must be properly and timely funded on a sustained basis.

In response, we acknowledge the service delivery challenges that SSA faces, and believe that we have fairly characterized field office staffing declines as a significant factor in meeting work demands and the resulting adverse effects. Ensuring that SSA has the resources to meet future service deliver challenges is essential. However, we continue to believe that SSA must employ a more strategic and creative approach to meet these challenges.

Related GAO Products

Social Security Disability: Better Planning, Management, and Evaluation Could Help Address Backlogs (GAO-08-40, Dec. 7, 2007).

Social Security Administration: Additional Actions Needed in Ongoing Efforts to Improve 800-Number Service (GAO-05-735, Aug. 8, 2005).

SSA Customer Service: Broad Service Delivery Plan Needed to Address Future Challenges (GAO/T-HEHS/AIMD-00-75, Feb. 10, 2000).

SSA’s Management Challenges: Strong Leadership Needed to Turn Plans Into Timely, Meaningful Action (GAO/T-HEHS-98-113, Mar. 12, 1998).

Social Security Administration: Significant Challenges Await New Commissioner (GAO/HEHS-97-53, Feb. 20, 1997).

Social Security Administration: Effective Leadership Needed to Meet Daunting Challenges (GAO/HEHS-96-196, Sept. 12, 1996).

Social Security: Sustained Effort Needed to Improve Management and Prepare for the Future (GAO/HRD-94-22, Oct. 27, 1993).

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