Social Security Administration: Service Delivery Plan Needed to Address Baby Boom Retirement Challenges
Released: 2009-02-09T00:00:00

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 retired 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 2008, these three benefit programs provided a combined total of approximately $650 billion to nearly 55 million beneficiaries. SSA projects that the benefit payments and number of beneficiaries for the three programs will increase in fiscal year 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; Social Security Card Centers, which issue Social Security numbers; Teleservice Centers, which offer national, toll-free telephone service; Program Service Centers, which make entitlement decisions for benefits, as well as assist in answering 800-number calls.

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

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. In September 2008, there were 1,267 field offices and 30 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 734 contact stations, as of September 2008. 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, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Utah, Alaska, and Wyoming. SSA is planning to expand the video network to provide additional sites and services.

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. Figure 1 shows the various options by which customers may conduct their business with SSA.

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. Appendix III describes the functions of each of these entities in the medical disability determination process for Disability and SSI claims. DDSs also conduct continuing disability reviews for Disability and SSI beneficiaries to ensure that individuals are still medically eligible for payments.

Reduced Field Office Staffing May Have Adversely Affected Field Office Operations

Overall, the number of field office staff and the amount of work completed declined from fiscal year 2005 through 2008. Specifically, both staffing levels and work completed decreased from 2005 through 2007 and increased slightly in 2008. However, field office employees completed more work, on average, as a result of greater efficiency. If not for the increased productivity of SSA, the decline in work completed could have been greater. Nonetheless, staffing declines resulted in customers waiting longer to be served and difficulties for field offices in answering calls from customers. SSA and its field offices used various strategies to manage work demands, such as deferring certain work, sharing work among offices, and redirecting staff to serve critical needs outside of their usual responsibilities. Despite these efforts, field office managers and staff stated that they cannot keep up with their work. Further, these factors may have contributed to a 3 percent drop in SSA’s customer satisfaction rating between fiscal years 2005 and 2008. While SSA has measures to monitor field office waiting times and, to a certain extent, customer service, SSA has no quantitative field office standards for how long customers should wait and if the phone should be answered. According to SSA, field offices have greatly varying circumstances with visitors and phone service and standards in these areas have not been established. Instead, SSA has a variety of field office measures for processing work.

Increased Staff Productivity Helped Soften the Impact of Staffing Decline

Despite a 4.4 percent staffing decline from fiscal years 2005 through 2008, the amount of work that field offices produced decreased by only 1.3 percent. As a result, the average amount of work produced by field office employees increased by 2.9 percent between fiscal years 2005 and 2008 (see table 4). One reason for this greater efficiency is that SSA is shifting work from busy field offices to less busy offices; SSA cites other reasons, including automation efforts and simplification of programs and policies. The field office staffing reduction comprised 65 percent of SSA’s overall reduction.

SSA officials attributed the staffing reductions to inadequate appropriations. Table 5 shows the Commissioner’s and the President’s budget requests and SSA’s final appropriations (as available) for fiscal years 2002 through 2009. The table also shows the changes in recent staffing levels. 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 are serving a growing volume of visitors. Comparing fiscal years 2006 and 2008, visitor volume increased by about 2.5 million customers, from 41.9 million to 44.4 million. As figure 2 shows, from fiscal years 2005 through 2008, SSA processed more postentitlement work (other than for continuing eligibility reviews), enumeration work, and Medicare work. SSA processed less work for OASI, Disability, and SSI claims (nonmedical determinations only); Continuing Disability Reviews; and SSI Redeterminations. SSA attributes the high volume of postentitlement actions to the growth in beneficiary populations.

SSA Deferred Certain Field Office Work, and Used Other 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 this work 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 also are using claims processing personnel to perform the duties typically conducted by lower-graded employees, and in some cases, even office managers take on 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.

While SSA is encouraging customers to use automated services to help field offices accomplish their work, many field staff said that real gains in automated services will 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 fiscal years 2007 and 2008, respectively, the public performed 2.9 million and 3.7 million electronic transactions. Among SSA’s electronic services are applying for retirement and disability benefits, requesting a change of address, arranging direct deposit of benefit amounts, and requesting a Medicare replacement card. SSA’s electronic services are available to the public over the Internet and some are also available 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.

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 with the emphasis on completing core workloads, certain postentitlement actions typically are 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 disability and SSI benefits.

Reviews of continuing eligibility, however, are key activities in ensuring payment accuracy. Such reviews yield a lifetime savings for both Disability and SSI of $10 for every dollar invested, according to SSA. In recent years, SSA has reduced the number of reviews conducted, citing budget limitations and an increase in core work (see fig. 3). When reviews of benefits are delayed, some beneficiaries are allowed to continue receiving benefits when they no longer qualify.

Despite SSA’s efforts to manage work with reduced staff, many managers responding to a survey conducted in February and March 2007 by the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) stated that they 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.

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

Reduced staffing and increases in visitors may have contributed to a buildup of work in field offices and longer customer wait times over the past few years. According to an SSA official, staffing shortfalls resulted in a buildup of 1,000 work years, for work that SSA was not able to complete at the end of fiscal year 2007. SSA projects that the buildup will grow to 5,800 work years 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. Staffing reductions also may have led to longer customer waiting times. From fiscal year 2002 through 2006, the average waiting time to first contact for all customers increased by 40 percent from 15 to 21 minutes (see fig. 4).

SSA has not established standards for how long customers should wait to be served and waiting times vary considerably among offices. In fiscal year 2008, 8 percent of customers nationwide—more than 3 million people—waited more than an hour, which included approximately 405,000 customers who waited more than 2 hours for service (see table 6). In both fiscal years 2007 and 2008, customers with appointments waited significantly less time than those without appointments. For example, for fiscal year 2007, SSA reported that 1,214 offices had average waiting times of less than 10 minutes for customers with appointments, while only 2 had average waiting times of more than an hour. We also found significant variability in waiting times among field offices for customers without appointments. 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 fiscal year 2007 waited more than an hour on average at 4 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 app. II, table 9).

Further, some field office managers and staff in the offices we visited told us that many customers report they waited for over an hour before meeting with SSA representatives. In 17 of the 21 field offices visited, managers and staff told us that long waiting times were among the top customer complaints. In addition, 82 percent of the managers responding to the February and March 2007 NCSSMA survey reported that waiting times in their offices were longer than they had been in the prior 2 years; in the 2005 survey, 72 percent of the managers reported that their staffing was not sufficient to maintain reasonable waiting times.

Insufficient staffing also may have been a factor in poor office phone service. SSA’s 2006 Field Office Caller Survey found that 51 percent of customers that called 48 randomly selected field offices had one or more earlier calls that had gone unanswered. 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 even higher. In addition, staff at 13 of the 21 offices we visited characterized their phone service as inadequate, while staff in 2 of these offices reported that they did not answer their offices’ phones at all. Employees we interviewed also cited inadequate telephone service as a common customer complaint at 15 offices. SSA has undertaken efforts to improve service in this area. For example, in 2007, SSA 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 has since expanded the pilot to approximately 200 field offices.

SSA has not established standards for customer waiting times or telephone service. Without such standards, SSA is less able to target its scarce resources to improve customer service. To enable agencies to identify areas in need of improvement, GAO internal control standards state that agencies should establish standards and monitor performance. Further, while SSA conducts national surveys of customer satisfaction and 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.

Staff at some of the offices we visited indicated that they now have less time to spend with customers, potentially leading to mistakes and also limiting the ability of staff to ensure that customers fully understand their options and benefits. These factors may have contributed to a 3 percent drop in SSA’s overall customer satisfaction rating from 84 percent in fiscal year 2005 to 81 percent in fiscal year 2008. 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 they experienced in attempting to complete their work in a timely manner, and 65 percent 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, with 74 percent of managers describing 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, and SSA has reduced the number of continuing disability reviews (medical) and SSI redeterminations that it conducts to ensure that disability beneficiaries are paid the correct amounts. Further, managers and staff told us that they often do not have time to take their breaks, including lunch. Some staff told us that 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 they have tried to ease the stress on staff by authorizing the use of overtime. The officials also noted that, over time, the automated tools should reduce the burden on staff, as customers that use the tools will not have to visit a field office.

Growth in Work Demands and an Employee Retirement Wave May Pose Difficult Challenges without a Detailed Plan for Service Delivery

Projected increases to SSA’s workload from retirement and disability filings by the nation’s approximately 80 million baby boomers and a wave of employee retirements may pose serious management challenges. Further, SSA has no detailed plan to ensure quality service is provided to the public in an environment characterized by growing work demands and limited resources.

Projected Growth in Work Demands and Employee Retirement Wave Will Pose Challenges for SSA

SSA estimates a 13 percent rise in OASI, Disability, and SSI claims over the next 10 years, rising from a combined total of 9.4 million, in fiscal year 2008, to 10.7 million in fiscal year 2017 (see fig. 5). SSA projected that its claims receipts would increase at a faster pace between fiscal years 2007 through 2010 than they did in fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

SSA projects 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 (see fig. 6). By 2050, there will be an estimated total of 95.6 million OASI and Disability beneficiaries.

SSA’s ability to meet its growing workload challenges will be more difficult as a result of the anticipated retirement of many of the agency’s most experienced field office workers. Today, about 20 percent of all SSA employees are eligible for regular retirement, and that figure will grow to 39 percent in the next 5 years. Based on the agency’s projections, 44 percent of SSA’s current workforce will retire by 2016. The peak of these retirements began in 2007 and is expected to continue into 2009, and then start to decline gradually (see fig. 7). SSA’s projections suggest that the ranks of SSA’s supervisors will be hit hard, 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. During fiscal years 2007 and 2008, respectively, SSA lost 3,074 and 2,605 staff to 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. Also, new hires would benefit from mentoring by veteran employees before the latter retire. Using the approximately $150 million that SSA was appropriated above the President’s fiscal year 2008 budget request, SSA planned to hire an additional 3,900 staff for operations, including 2,350 new hires for regional and field office operations. Although SSA hired 2,479 staff for its field offices, after transfers, retirements, and resignations, at the end of fiscal year 2008, SSA had only 791 more staff in its field offices than it did at the end of fiscal year 2007. As a result, the end of fiscal year 2008 SSA had 1,256 field staff fewer than it did at the end of fiscal year 2005.

SSA has used a variety of strategies to maintain adequate staffing. SSA offers recruitment, relocation, and retention bonuses to individuals with needed skills and may consider employees’ prior nonfederal work 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’s Strategic Plan Is Ambitious, but It Is Not Clear How SSA Plans to Achieve Its Goals

SSA’s new strategic plan, published in September 2008, calls for SSA to eliminate the backlog of disability hearings; improve the speed and quality of the disability process; and improve retiree services—such as achieving an online filing rate of 50 percent of retirement applications by 2012. This plan also stresses the workload increases that SSA will face in the coming years and recognizes SSA’s limited resources. However, this plan does not explain what changes to field offices and what resources will be needed to eliminate backlogs and improve services. While discussing the strategic plan with us, SSA officials stated the strategic plan is not intended to be a service delivery plan that details how the agency will address the service needs of the retiring Baby Boom generation.

As early as 1993 and most recently in 2000, we recommended that SSA develop a service delivery plan to help focus its efforts on meeting future challenges. In 2000, we reported that SSA needed to better position itself for the future by altering the agency’s network of facilities to more closely align it with projected customer needs and demographics. Since 2000, SSA has not developed a detailed plan for providing services to an expanding population of customers brought on by the baby boom population reaching retirement age. Instead, SSA officials told us that they use their strategic plan to provide a broad vision and goals, and the annual budget process to request resources for incremental changes. As this report and SSA’s strategic plan show, SSA faces significant challenges in the future; however, SSA remains without a plan that describes how it will continue to do more work with fewer resources and achieve its new strategic goals. It is not clear how SSA’s infrastructure, including the approximately 1,300 field offices with 27,000 field employees, can accommodate the growing workload and field office visitor volume while ensuring quality customer service. Further, while the plan includes strategies to significantly expand the use of electronic services, it is not clear how the increase of online services will mitigate the increasing workload.

Conclusions

While SSA has taken action to manage its workload with fewer staff, the broader challenge of providing nationwide field office service remains. Although customers expect to be served in a reasonable amount of time and have their phone calls answered, field offices are deferring certain work, customers are waiting longer to be served, and staff feel 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 even more pressure on field offices and could make these problems more severe.

It is essential that SSA manage its increasing workload through strong planning efforts. SSA’s strategic plan is a strong first step with its acknowledgment of growing work demands and budget constraints. Achieving the plan’s goal of an online filing rate of 50 percent of retirement applications will surely relieve some service-demand growth at field offices. However, it is not clear how SSA plans to accommodate the growing workload and the goals of the strategic plan, while ensuring quality customer service at field offices. SSA has been deferring work and letting customer service decline. SSA’s new strategic plan indeed seeks to address these problems, but it is not clear if SSA’s plan for greater reliance on online retirement filings will, by itself, be sufficient. Whether SSA will need more resources or an altered field office infrastructure, or both, is unclear. 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.

Recommendation for Executive Action

To pursue high-quality field office service, we recommend that SSA develop a service delivery plan that describes, in detail, how it will deliver quality customer service in the future while managing growing work demands with constrained resources. This plan should identify the extent that new business processes will allow SSA to accommodate growing demand or whether additional resources are needed to achieve its strategic goals. Further, this plan should establish standards for field office customer waiting times and phone service to help identify and improve offices with poor service.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We obtained written comments on a draft of this report from the Commissioner of Social Security, which are reproduced in appendix IV. In addition, SSA provided technical comments, which we incorporated in the report where appropriate.

In response to our draft report, SSA disagreed with our statement that they do not have a detailed plan to address future service delivery needs. Rather, it commented that it continually plans for the future and has been long aware that the Baby Boom generation would have a dramatic impact on internal staffing losses, as well as escalating disability and retirement claims workloads. SSA described its current efforts as being the Annual Strategic Plan and the agency’s annual budget documents. However, in response to continuing concerns about a lack of a consolidated plan to address the disability and retirement wave of the Baby Boom generation, SSA commented that it is now developing a single document that describes the many planning efforts that it has in place. SSA commented that its consolidated document will, at minimum, include comprehensive plans for expanding electronic services for customers; increasing the centralization of receiving phone calls and working claims from customers while maintaining the network of local field offices; enhancing phone and video services in field offices (where applicable) and piloting self-service personal computers in the reception areas of those offices; and continuing to assess the efficiency of field offices.

We welcome SSA’s decision to develop a consolidated planning document. While SSA has a variety of planning efforts to improve its operations, it is still not clear how SSA plans to minimize the deferral of its workloads and its decline in customer service. The annual strategic plan is a strong vision for the future, and annual budget documents detail short-term resource requirements, but the budget documents do not identify resource requirements for more than the next year and the strategic plan does not identify resource requirements at all. It is not clear if SSA goals outlined in the strategic plan can be achieved using the current infrastructure, and we continue to recommend that SSA make clear to what extent additional resources or an altered field office infrastructure might be needed to accommodate the growth in disability and retirement filings.

SSA did not agree with our recommendation to establish quantitative standards for field office customer wait times and phone service, stating that such standards would create problems by diverting staff already spread thin across field offices away from processing claims and postentitlement work. SSA stated that it tracks waiting times and makes adjustments as necessary to improve service, and that many of the recently hired field office staff went to offices with the highest waiting times. Still, over 3 million people waited over 1 hour for service last year and in 2 offices the average wait was over 1 hour. The majority of phone calls to field offices went unanswered, and the practice in some field offices of not answering the phone and not returning voices messages is unprofessional. While we understand that SSA field offices face many pressures, we believe that clear standards that establish a minimum level of quality customer service are an essential first step for organizations to measure success. Absent customer service standards, long field office waiting times and inadequate field office phone service are problems that risk becoming entrenched.

In total, planning efforts should strive to establish that SSA’s infrastructure is in the proper condition to manage its workload and provide quality customer service. However, it is still not clear what infrastructure changes and resources are needed for SSA to succeed.

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies to the Commissioner of Social Security, appropriate congressional committees, and other interested parties. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you have any questions concerning this report, please contact me 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 report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this report are listed in appendix V.

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

The objectives of our study were to determine (1) the effect that staffing reductions have had on field office operations and (2) the challenges the Social Security Administration (SSA) faces in meeting service delivery needs in the future and the agency’s plans for addressing them. To assess our first objective, we: Interviewed SSA headquarters office operations. officials responsible for overseeing field Compared the overall number of field office staffing per year from fiscal years 2005 through 2008 to the amount of work produced overall by the field offices for the same fiscal years to understand changes in field office work productivity.

Condensed the 57 different types of work actions listed in the SSA’s District Office Work Report into eight larger categories, and compared the work volumes completed between fiscal years 2005 and 2008.

Determined the level of field office staffing using end of year staffing data from SSA’s Justification for Appropriations Committees annual documents as well as administrative data that SSA officials provided to us for fiscal years 2002 through 2008.

Compared the national average wait time data from SSA’s Field Office Waiting Time Study from fiscal year 2002 through 2006, and reported data from SSA’s Visitor Intake Program (VIP) data for fiscal years 2007 and 2008.

Interviewed managers and staff in 21 field offices, 2 Social Security Card Centers, 2 regional offices, and 3 area offices to gain their perspectives on the effect of staffing reductions and strategies used to manage work. We selected the field offices based on the populations they served, their geographic location, number of staff, and customer wait times (see app. II for a listing of the field offices we visited).

We tested the reliability of SSA’s work productivity and staffing data, and found that they were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our review. Specifically, we obtained three relevant databases for fiscal years 2005 through 2008: (1) District Office Workload Report, (2) Work Unit Per Work Year, and (3) staffing data. Each database contained critical data for analysis of the workload handled by each SSA field office. SSA identified these files as containing the supporting data for reports that SSA had developed for internal uses. We tested the key variables in each file for completeness and accuracy of the values coded in the records. To determine the reliability of field office staffing data provided by SSA, we compared the SSA data against staffing data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Central Personnel Data File. We compared the number of staff per field office from OPM’s file with the number of staff per field office provided by SSA. While there were isola differences for certain field offices, we found SSA’s field office staffing data sufficiently reliable for the purpose of reporting field office staffing data by region and nationally.

We e th annual national average wait time for fiscal years 2002 to 2006, and (2) e th national- and field-office-level wait time data from the VIP system that A first implemented nationwide for fiscal year 2007. The fiscal year 2002 SS to 2006 data came from SSA’s Field Office Waiting Time Study that was con . represented the national average of wait times that field offices collected e sample of customer wait time at field offices was not large enough to Th allo vel vel reported directly to field office management instead of an of the SSA organization smaller than the national average. SSA conducted ty of two sources of customer wait time data: (1) ducted annually through the en d of fiscal year 2006. The data w SSA to calculate statistically representative wait times for any le e ld office during a randomly selected 1-hour period each quarter of a al year. SSA staff charged with implementing the sample at the field th study by having field employees sample customer wait times for each fie fisc office le independent entity within SSA. In a method such as this, it is important for ind yea noted that from fiscal year 2002 through 2006, the average wait time were missing. We also found unexpected data entries; for instance, we orted by SSA increased from 15.2 to 21.0 minutes. We asked SSA found wait times entered for weekend dates and negative wait times. icials whether confidence intervals surrounding the wait time estimates each fiscal year had been calculated. They informed us that they d Weid rep off for not believe these calculations had been made. To assess if the increase in wait times from fiscal year 2002 through 2006 was statistically significant, we determined that we had to estimate the sampling error and create confidence intervals surrounding the average wait times. The result was that for any year in the 2002 through 2006 period, the margin of error was s no larger than 0.84. This allowed us to conclude that while difference between one individual year and the next were only sometimes statistically significant, the difference between wait times for fiscal ye 2002 and 2006, respectively, was statistically significant. The difference of than 5.35 minutes (based on GAO calculations) yielded a p-value of less .0001. Statistical analysis of this kind assumes independence between observations. However, we noted that this was not necessarily the ca ividual field offices to comply with the sampling regime. For the fiscal r 2002 through 2006 period, data for 14.9 percent of the sample hours se. If, for example, the first visit of the day took longer than scheduled, s ome visitors arriving for later appointments with SSA staff on the same day would presumably have to wait past their scheduled appointment time.

The VIP system has several uses, one of which is to produce average wait time data for each field office, as well as averages for each successive level of SSA’s field structure (e.g., area, region, and national). The VIP system replaced the Waiting Time Study at the start of fiscal year 2007. SSA now electronically collects data on wait time that represent the full cohort of SSA field office visitors (with few exceptions). However, there are no built-in edits to capture input errors; rather, errors would have to be identified by users of the data. We performed electronic testing of key da elements using all data for 21 field offices to which we had made a site visit. After determining that SSA’s initial reports for GAO contained incorrect calculations, we worked with SSA staff to replicate the wait time for selected groups of visitors; once completed, we determined that our replicated database was comparable to the data that SSA had developed on the basis of our joint work, and therefore we concluded that we could use the VIP data as support for our conclusions and recommendations.

To address our second objective, we: Interviewed SSA headquarters officials responsible for operations, budget, and strategic and human capital planning, and obtained relevant documentation.

Obtained data from SSA headquarters officials on the actual and projected growth in the number of claims for fiscal years 2005 throug 2017.

Obtained the actual and projected number of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (Disability) beneficiaries between calendar years 2007 and 2050 from the 2008 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees to identify the projected increase in the demand for SSA services.

Obtained the actual and projected number of retirements of SSA staff agency-wide from SSA’s “retirement wave” analyses for fiscal years 2007 through 2016 to assess future staffing needs.

Reviewed SSA’s past strategic plans and budget documents and discussed the new strategic plan with SSA officials to determine SSA’s plan for addressing future service delivery needs, and assessed the adequacy of SSA’s internal controls in the context of customer service policies.

In assessing the adequacy of SSA’s internal controls, we used the criteri in GAO’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1, dated November 1999. These standards, issued pursuant to the requirements of the Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act of 1982, provide the overall framework for establishing and maintaining internal control in the federal government. Also pursuant to the same Act, the Office of Management and Budget issued Circular A- 123, revised December 21, 2004, to provide the specific requirements for assessing the reporting on internal controls. Internal control standards an the definition of internal control in Circular A-123 are based on GAO’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government.

We conducted our work between July 2007 and January 2009 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Data on Beneficiaries, Staffing, Visitor Volume, and Wait Times in the 21 Offices GAO Visited

We used various data from SSA to select 21 field offices to visit. We wanted a variety of offices in terms of geographic location, size of the beneficiary population covered, the number of staff, the number of visitors, and waiting times. Our selection of field offices was based on data for the years indicated.

Appendix III: Functions of Field Offices and Other Entities in Medical Disability Determinations for Disability and SSI Claims

Claimant contacts SSA field offices

If reconsideration is not favorable, claimant has 60 days to request a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ)

Application process begins

Figre : GAO ly of SSA d; Art Exploion (imge).

Appendix IV: Comments from the Social Security Administration

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the individual named above, key contributions to this report were made by Blake Ainsworth, Assistant Director; Mary A. Crenshaw, Analyst-In-Charge; Justin Fisher; Mitchell Karpman; Matthew Lee; Vanessa Taylor; Walter Vance; Charles Willson; Gregory Wilmouth; and Paul Wright.

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Social Security Disability: Better Planning, Management, and Evaluation Could Help Address Backlogs. GAO-08-40. Washington, D.C.: December 7, 2007.

Social Security Administration: Additional Actions Needed in Ongoing Efforts to Improve 800-Number Service. GAO-05-735. Washington, D.C.: August 8, 2005.

SSA Customer Service: Broad Service Delivery Plan Needed to Address Future Challenges. GAO/T-HEHS/AIMD-00-75. Washington, D.C.: February 10, 2000.

SSA’s Management Challenges: Strong Leadership Needed to Turn Plans Into Timely, Meaningful Action. GAO/T-HEHS-98-113. Washington, D.C.: March 12, 1998.

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Social Security Administration: Effective Leadership Needed to Meet Daunting Challenges. GAO/HEHS-96-196. Washington, D.C.: September 12, 1996.

Social Security: Sustained Effort Needed to Improve Management and Prepare for the Future. GAO/HRD-94-22. Washington, D.C.: October 27, 1993.