The Social Security Administration has a plan to improve its processes.
The agency’s Agenda 2024, released yesterday, includes over 170 items to be addressed to reduce waiting times for disability benefits, improve telephone service and more.
SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley believes the agency can do this with the right funding.
“This effort will require important investments, including passage of the President’s fiscal year 2025 budget request for the Social Security Administration,” he wrote in a letter at the beginning of the agency’s 2024 “action plan.”
Lawmakers are still working on funding packages for the coming fiscal year. So far, senators have put forward a proposal to increase the agency’s administrative budget, while Republicans in the House have pushed for cuts.
O’Malley argued that the SSA needs investment because the agency’s operating budget has declined over the past decade, leading to what the commissioner called a “customer service crisis.”
The plan’s key priorities for the remainder of the year are based on more than 5,000 recommendations from staff and other stakeholders, the commissioner writes. O’Malley himself toured SSA facilities nationwide after being confirmed late last year.
The document includes points on technology, customer experience and more – improvements designed to help both SSA employees and Americans seeking help from the agency.
It is structured around 27 strategic initiatives that represent the Commissioner’s top priorities, including investing in the SSA workforce and reducing benefit overpayments and underpayments.
Tasks to be completed include efforts to reduce the need for signatures and, where necessary, offer electronic signatures instead of handwritten signatures.
In March, the agency introduced an electronic signature and document upload tool in all branches.
So far, 50 forms and 79 other “evidence types” are available for electronic signature and upload. The SSA has also approved eliminating the wet signature on 13 forms, which account for 1 million filings annually, the new plan says.
The agency now wants to offer this option on a self-service basis – currently, an electronic signature requires the assistance of an SSA technician – and expand the service to include additional forms.
Another goal of the plan is to expand the scope of Americans’ ability to use SSA’s online accounts.
The agency wants to offer self-service online appointment management, secure messaging with SSA staff and more. Another goal is to improve the agency’s online claim status tracker by adding more details.
There are also plans to make more applications available online. The SSA has long had the goal of making the application for Supplemental Security Income available online.
The agency also wants to improve internal systems so that when a person’s address is updated in one application, that update is automatically reflected in all other relevant systems.
Finally, the 2024 Action Plan also includes efforts to improve the communications the SSA sends to people by requiring plain language customer experiences and reviews as part of the agency’s existing approval process for new communications. Expanding language access is also an initiative under the plan.
Beyond technology and customer experience efforts, the agency has already moved forward with regulations to simplify programs such as disability insurance, and implementing those regulations is also part of the plan.
As for implementing all of this, the agency’s Office of Transformation will coordinate and track progress across SSA, said O’Malley, who also wrote that work on all initiatives has already begun.
Those interested in tracking progress can visit the agency’s website to search for SecurityStat, O’Malley’s performance measurement tool, which provides data on the highest priorities.
