The application received one of the highest scores ever given to a public or private sector organization by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (Disman 2006). Social Security Administration 1991 annual report to the Congress. Responding to this examination and reexamination of the criteria for finding children eligible for SSI disability payments, SSA once more published revised regulations, now effective January 2, 2001. The hardware component of CMP/FOSE was the Terminal Acquisition Project (TAP). In FY 1977, new hearings requests rose 23 percent, from 157,688 the prior year to 193,657 (SSA 1978a, 64). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. The agency also had to prepare and certify those who would be providing hospital and medical services covered under HI and SMI. SSA announced its new Internet application for LIS on June 29, 2005, and began taking applications in July (SSA 2005d). Zwintscher, Paula R. 1952. Why can't it be eliminated? The decision-making process was very labor intensive. Washington, DC: Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics. The switch to AWR brought problems and frustrations for both IRS and SSA. That's how long the Social Security 2100 Act has been in the works, he said. Annual report of the Social Security Administration fiscal year 1970. SSA also helped pioneer a microfilm printer that linked computer and microfilm technology (OTA 1986, 99). 110-715. SSA was tasked with deducting Part D premiums from Social Security payments and administering the low-income subsidy (LIS) program. Subsequently, all the related files and records were combined and centralized (Altmeyer 1966, 86). In spite of these efforts, when the SSI program began, thousands of SSI records lacked a genuine SSN and had to be controlled under temporary "pseudo-numbers" (9-digit numbers beginning with a "9"). A quarter century of aiding the disabled. Although SSA's productivity improved 16.1 percent between 1967 and 1972, the agency was strained. Ladd, Boyd, Thomas D. Scriggins, Conway J. Christianson, and John H. Moss. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/oasis/july1995.pdf. Because of litigation and budget cuts, the agency's ALJ workforce by 2008 had declined about 10 percent from a decade earlier, even though the number of cases awaiting a hearing had doubled. Immediately after implementing the new standard, the rate increased to 50–60 percent. ———. 93-233 to "roll back" cases added to the rolls after June 30, 1973, requiring SSA to make new disability determinations. 1990. Of the 45,000 post offices then in existence, 1,017 first class offices were designated as "typing centers" to assign the SSNs, along with 57 "central accounting" post offices to assign SSNs for the second, third, and fourth class post offices within their area (McKinley and Frase 1970, 368). The impossible takes a day and a half. The Bureau of Research and Statistics, aided by the Field Organization Committee, improvised the initial training activities. SSA also brought employees in from other field offices and from the Disability Determination Services (DDSs, formerly known as state agencies) to assist (SSA 1970; SSA 1995c). District offices were also affected, as they had to interview the applicants, complete a medical history, record their observations, and obtain the medical records. Interview by Larry DeWitt. In 1999, SSA developed a "PolicyNet" site where employees could access all of the agency's program policy and procedural instructions, including POMS. In September 1991, an individual who worked at the Western PSC in Richmond, California, for a firm under contract to SSA died of Legionnaire's disease. Nevertheless, claims workloads are still growing faster than SSA can process them. SSA expected to have to readjudicate about 550,000 retroactive claims, along with an ongoing workload of 135,000 additional cases per year under the new standards (SSA 1991, 26). The new SSI software was not the only computer system failure. In 1976, GAO issued a report declaring that people who were no longer disabled were still receiving benefits and that SSA was not taking action to correct the situation. Soon, both claims representatives and service representatives were conducting redetermination interviews to deal with the volume of work involved. At midyear, the Informational Service prepared the publicity campaign to encourage employers and workers to complete the application forms, but they did not plan to distribute the material until after the November 3 election. By FY 1970, field office employees were authorizing 43 percent of initial claims (SSA 1970, 19). McKinley, Charles, and Robert W. Frase. District offices were to report to Washington, with the Bureau's regional representative to be responsible only for inspection and training functions. [description] => Introduced On January 28, 2009, SSA announced that improvements to the agency's computer modeling system had increased the number of disability claimants receiving expedited approvals to about 4 percent of all disability cases—numbering about 100,000 to 125,000 per year. ALJs frequently had additional evidence not available to the DDSs. 1976. Federal Security Agency. The first claim was filed by a Cleveland motorman named Ernest Ackerman, who retired 1 day after the Social Security program began. It was not updated very often, so it was supplemented with "adjudication instructions," copies of which were kept by each claims adjudicator. SSA opened temporary offices at evacuation centers such as the Houston Astrodome, the Baton Rouge River Center, the Albuquerque Convention Center, the Lubbock Reese Center, and the El Paso and Dallas Convention Centers. 3 A trading zone is the area beyond an urban area whose residents regularly trade with merchants within the urban area. SSA issued its Plan for a New Disability Claim Process on September 7, 1994 (SSA n.d. b; Harmon and others 2000). During the November and December initial registration period, there were also 12 nationwide radio broadcasts by well-known individuals and a host of local broadcasts arranged by the 56 skeletal field offices then in place. Area offices worked extensive overtime to compute the benefit increases that resulted from the 1954 amendments. The effort required to create the Medicare program while simultaneously implementing the OASDI benefit portion of the 1965 legislation was staggering. To speed payment to needy blind and disabled claimants, SSA implemented a "presumptive disability" decision process for certain impairments, such as blindness, which allowed payments for up to 12 months pending the DDS decision; if the recipient was found not disabled, repayment was not required (House Ways and Means Committee 1975, 26). Major exhibition includes our card punch operations. Additionally, President Richard Nixon ordered that total federal employment be reduced by 5 percent and that all agencies reduce the average grade level for employees. By that date, SSA had enrolled about 19.1 million HI beneficiaries and 17.3 million SMI enrollees (HEW 1966, 10). Meanwhile, regular staff and some temporary hires at 1,350 state, county, and local welfare offices were filling out the computer input forms used to convert their beneficiaries to SSI (House Ways and Means Committee 1975, 13). Senate Hearing No. About ¼ of all youth today will suffer a … IRS then sent a record of the wage reports to SSA's BDP, which microfilmed the reports and filed the films for storage and future reference. Once again, SSA kept field offices open evenings and weekends to accommodate the applicants. The DOCs' new optical character recognition scanning equipment was not fully operational until March, and the data entry upgrade was not fully operational until June—in both cases, several months later than expected (SSA 1980a). It needs 218 votes to pass. For instance, some states provided higher welfare payments to account for family members in the recipient's household who were themselves ineligible but were considered essential to the recipient. OASIS 40(1): 2. New coverage provisions added new complexity to the program, and additional complexity resulted from legislative provisions to ensure that no one was disadvantaged by changes in program rules. SSA agreed to these state variations in hopes that states would choose federal administration of their supplements, and would choose quickly. Seventy-five percent of callers reported that their transaction was completed on the first call, and 90 percent were pleased with the agent's courtesy. ———. The agency also placed more than 125,000 posters in English and Spanish in offices of state and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations that provided services to disabled children (SSA 1992a, 20). SSA also worked with the uniformed services and with the 58 employers who lost employees in the World Trade Center for follow-up. The legislation also imposed a disability "megacap" offset and introduced a new way of computing SSI payments called retrospective monthly accounting (SSA n.d. b). Social Security Bulletin 15(1): 3–14. It also instituted a "transitional insured status" for persons who reached age 72 before 1969. She had paid $24.75 in Social Security taxes between 1937 and 1939 on an income of $2,484 (SSA n.d. b). ( The claim was then forwarded to a claims authorizer or examiner in the area office (payment center) to make the formal entitlement determination. a new step to determine if a child's impairment had more than a minimal effect on his or her ability to function (equivalent to the severity step found in the adult rules), a new approach to satisfying the Listing of Impairments for children, called "functional equivalence," and. As of May 2007, SSA was receiving about 30,000 pplications for the LIS every week (Disman 2007). Without question, these were major changes. SSA is also expanding case processing capacity in its 10 regional disability units and the Federal Disability Center in Baltimore. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/futterman.html. SSA internal document. 1997a. Hiring for the Bureau of Old-Age Benefits was particularly hampered; as late as March 15, 1936, the Bureau had only five employees, including the director and his assistant. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation designating March 1966 as "National Medicare Enrollment Month." ———. Oral history collections: Manny Levine. In response to the disability freeze, SSA opened a number of new offices, many of them in medium-sized towns and rural areas (SSA 1960a, 34). However, actual operations would reveal that decentralization was not really feasible. Consequently, already in the 1950s, as many as 16 or 17 different recomputations might be needed. By the end of 1971, 30 percent of claims and postentitlement changes were handled by phone (SSA 1971, 8). In June 1976, flooding hit the Wilkes-Barre facility again, putting it out of operation for 2 weeks. Statement by Kenneth S. Apfel, Commissioner of Social Security, on SSI Childhood Disability Reviews. ———. National Research Council. Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank the many people in SSA who helped her locate material and those who reviewed her paper and suggested improvements. 1997. When disaster strikes a community, the agency's concerns are broader than just setting up shop in a new location. ———. The remainder of the 1994 plan was basically discarded (Harmon and others 2000). Willeford, Carolyn P. 1985. District office employees made nearly 90,000 talks, 194,000 radio broadcasts, and 5,000 live television appearances; they also manned 29,500 exhibits (HEW 1966, 21). Finding space for the growing agency was a major problem. First meeting of the Social Security Board, September 14, 1935. ———. BOAI supplemented the basic course with a 3-week technical course for its own personnel. The employee was to keep the stamps in a book and turn them in to the Social Security Board upon attaining age 65. SSA also put SSI announcements in more than 1,300 newspapers and aired more than 4,000 radio spots. Postentitlement workloads had grown by almost 25 percent over the previous 10 years, from 80 million to 100 million actions, primarily for program integrity activities such as SSI redeterminations and CDRs. Headquarters staff moved from D.C. to Baltimore on June 1, 1942. President Roosevelt responded with an attempt to pack the court via the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. SSA's retirement wave appears to have crested in 2007, when 3,074 employees, 5 percent of the workforce, retired. The Commissioner directed a new review of approximately 45,000 of the 135,000 cases in which payments had ceased. 8 An essential person was defined as someone who had continuously lived in the qualified individual's home since December 1973, was not eligible for state assistance in December 1973, and had never been eligible for SSI payments as an eligible individual or as an eligible spouse. Social Security rated one of the "best places to work in the federal government." During the 1990s the Clinton Administration launched an effort to reengineer government under the auspices of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, also known as the National Performance Review. The objective was to bring together agencies whose major purposes were to "promote social and economic security, educational opportunity, and the health of the citizens of the Nation" (FSA 1948, v). Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/legislation/testimony_031600.html. The first member of the general public to receive a Medicare card. On November 6, the campaign to encourage employers and employees to register began. Social Security is an important social insurance program that many Americans have come to rely on for retirement, disability, and survivor benefits—according to the Social Security … For the remaining 3,500 cases, SSA packed the folders in 400 boxes and carted them down 6 flights of stairs guided by flashlight (Barnhart 2006). In addition to issuing SSNs and contacting employers about wage filings, they now served large numbers of people arriving to file claims for monthly benefits. SSA News Release (September 30). Although Bureau employment grew from 18,000 in 1956 to 22,500 in 1958, ingenuity and new, more efficient processes were required to cope with the additional work (SSA 1960a, 34). Employees could use the terminals not only to take claims, but also to query online databases for prior claims data or to request an online benefit estimate (Willeford 1985). 1950. Baltimore, MD: SSA. Oral history collections: John Ritter. The surveys went on through the spring, summer, and fall of 1942, and the information was submitted to the War Production Board (Olcott 1981, 14–15; SSA 1975b). These new units, called Extended Service Teams, will be located in states that have a history of high quality and productivity and that have the capacity to hire and train additional staff. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/bestplacetowork-pr.htm. A report prepared by the Committee on Review of the SSA's System Modernization Plan (SMP) and Agency Strategic Plan (ASP). SSA also set up six "mega-sites" in areas of large noncitizen populations to provide noncitizens with information and to help them obtain proof of their immigration status (Harmon and others 2000). That morning the new arrivals lined down the stairways and out around the building. SSA News Release (May 20). Social security is the way it is for good reasons, and any changes will be like pulling on a thread and unraveling the sweater. Alternatively, individuals could call SSA's 800 number to immediately file an application (McMahon 2006). Launching Social Security: A capture-and-record account, 1935–1937. 1960b. SSA News Release (February 11). Design engineers reviewed the application layout. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/MedicareHelp-pr.htm. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. Spouses account for over 30% of all Social Security benefits paid out for workers that are either deceased, retired or disabled. Once a year, the quarterly earning cards for each employee were summarized to one card via a tabulator with a punch attachment, and the summary annual wage information was posted to the ledger account (Wyatt and Wandel 1937, 123). The solution won’t be easy or simple. Its primary objective was to convert all SSA components involved in disability claims adjudication or review to electronic recordkeeping, featuring an "electronic disability folder" that can store digital images of medical records. On August 1, 1956, the Social Security Act was amended to provide monthly benefits to permanently and totally disabled workers aged 50–64; to pay child's benefits to disabled children aged 18 or older of retired or deceased workers, if their disability began before age 18; and to lower the retirement age to 62 for widows and female parents. As one Bureau employee later reported: The employees worked at unfinished wooden tables whose rough lumber ran slivers into the workers' hands and arms (Altmeyer 1966, 72). 2008b. SSA's Office of Public Affairs briefed representatives of 128 national organizations and agencies on SSI and issued 45 informational publications. The agency also had to provide information to every doctor in the country, explaining the program and encouraging them to participate (SSA 2001b). 1966. SSA's role would now be essentially identical with that of the now-abolished BOASI, focusing primarily on the retirement, survivors, and disability insurance programs. IRS and SSA reconciled the wage reports against the quarterly 941 forms, which employers still filed to pay their quarterly payroll taxes. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/legislation/testimony_013108.htm. In addition, the SS-5s were filmed on 16 millimeter, noninflammable film strips. DI claims also increased by 23.1 percent in FY 1974. 1978a. BOASI also began preparing for the legislation early and thoroughly. SSA Systems Modernization Plan 1986, field edition. ———. SSA's field organization tried to persuade headquarters that holding beneficiaries liable for mistakes SSA had made years earlier in its disability process was not sound policy. Davis, John A. Still, the offices were overflowing with staff and claimants. During the first 4 months of the registration campaign, nearly 26 million SSNs and more than 2.6 million EINs were assigned (Corson 1938, 3). Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/legislation/testimony_111909.htm. This project would be just the first of many SSA attempts to find ways of simplifying Social Security programs (SSA 1996e). The enrollment deadline for those aged 65 or older was March 31, 1966. Annual report of the Social Security Administration for fiscal year 1975: Submitted to the Congress by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on March 17, 1976. SSA internal document. On Capitol Hill and in the media, Svahn stated that SSA's system was on the verge of collapse, and that timely distribution of benefit checks was at risk. On January 1, 1974, SSA began taking BL claims for DOL on a reimbursable basis (SSA 1974b, 1). ———. 1996b. Baltimore, MD: SSA. Social Security Administration: More cost-effective approaches exist to further improve 800-number service. A policy group in the Claims Division had written the Claims Manual, but legal interpretations were largely made on the fly as cases came up. The building reopened and employees returned in December 1991 (SSA 1992a, 30). Social Security: Sustained effort needed to improve management and prepare for the future. SSI recipients with payment problems spilled out of the offices into the biting cold. Data operating centers (DOCs) in Wilkes-Barre, Albuquerque, and Salinas (California) handled paper reports requiring data entry; BDP's Baltimore facility handled reports filed on magnetic media. 1976. By then, SSA's partners had held over 40,000 Medicare outreach events (SSA 2005b). Routing changes allowed calls to be sent to the next available agent anywhere in the nation, and improved forecasting tools helped the agency better meet increasing demands for service. Central office teams were sent to three payment centers in September 1966 to observe operations and returned with suggested improvements (SSA n.d. a). One of the recommendations was an "individualized functional assessment" that focused on behavioral problems as a type of disorder (SSA 1995g). SSA hopes to update all of its existing listings by the end of FY 2010, and has developed a schedule to ensure all listings are updated as needed in the future (SSA 2009e, 15). Led by Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., the bill currently has 209 co-sponsors in the House. In fact, when the Board temporarily decided to cancel one Senator's home town as a field office location and also resisted hiring an unqualified protégé of his, the incensed Senator attached an amendment to the Board's 1937 appropriations limiting the salary of those hired under the Board's expert clause and cutting by 5 percent the salary of the Board executive who told the Senator "no" (McKinley and Frase 1970, 88). 1990. Svahn opportunely observed that SSA's computers were on the brink of failing. ———. ———. Interviews by Larry DeWitt. At first, the control center employees phoned the information to field offices, but as the volume of emergency requests rose, they teletyped their replies (SSA 1995h; SSA 1984b; SSA 1994b). SSA staff had to elicit and process SMI enrollment forms. In addition, noncitizens who were granted refugee status or similar humanitarian immigration classifications were limited to 5 years of eligibility, unless they obtained citizenship before the 5 years elapsed (Harmon and others 2000; SSA n.d. b; SSA 2009a, 24). ———. SSA was also affected by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Contracts had to be developed with the organizations that would process and review the bills and send out explanation-of-benefits notices (SSA 1995b). The Social Security Board was so alarmed that Chairman John G. Winant—a top Republican politician—resigned in order to campaign in defense of the Social Security Act. Report of the Advisory Council on Social Security: The status of the Social Security program and recommendations for its improvement. Additional amendments on July 18, 1952, increased benefits for the 4.6 million beneficiaries already on the rolls, and these increases had to be reflected in the September benefit checks. SSA internal document. In 2009, SSA opened National Hearing Centers in Albuquerque, Chicago, and Baltimore to supplement its Falls Church, Virginia, center. In November 2008, the American Customer Satisfaction Index for federal Web sites ranked the new online Retirement Estimator as the best in government (SSA 2008d). The appropriate control card was removed at the end of a step and sent to a control file to track the status of each block (McKinley and Frase 1970, 375). These 56 Bureau offices primarily answered questions and directed applicants to the post offices (McKinley and Frase 1970), but they were also busy working out procedures and methods with the Post Office Department and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The agency plans to open 14 new hearing offices and 4 satellite offices by the end of 2010 (SSA 2009j). SSA had to identify and then notify the families of children potentially affected by the legislation, who accounted for approximately 288,000 of the 1 million children receiving SSI disability payments. Assessment of SSA service to the public. SSA internal documents. Testimony before the House Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Social Security. Each day, DAO recorded about 715,000 accounts, with each card-punch operator keying in some 2,000 workers' wage reports (SSA 1992b, 15). 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