 About a year ago, I took the unprecedented step to
close our offices to the public. I did this to keep our employees
and you—the public we serve—safe. As we enter year two of the
COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines and other precautionary measures give us
cause for hope. For now, we will continue our current safety
measures as described in our COVID-19 Workplace Safety Plan. This
plan is iterative, and we will update it as we receive additional
government-wide guidance and information from public health experts
in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Like many businesses and organizations, the pandemic has forced us
to adapt. I want to thank our employees for their willingness to
embrace innovative ways of working while we continue to deliver our
mission. As we examine our work in a new light, we are asking which
lessons learned could improve service beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
We understand that the public wants to engage with us on some
matters in person, and our local offices are integral to our
communities. We also know that not everyone can conveniently come to
us in person and that when you do visit, you want the process to be
efficient. For example, we may need evidence from you, but we do not
need to interview you in person. We are currently testing drop box
and express appointment options for the public to bring in
documentation.
Often, you only need to know your Social Security number and do not
need a physical Social Security card. However, if you do need to
replace your card, we are testing video appointments if you need a
new Social Security card but do not need to change any of the
information in our records. Although ideas like these began as
solutions during COVID-19, we are considering how they could improve
service in the future.
Some of these concepts also allow us to consider how we might
continue to use telework, something that most organizations and
companies have depended on during the COVID-19 pandemic, to drive
longer-term operational efficiencies like reducing space. We could
use those savings to provide you more online service options and
hire more people to serve you more quickly as well as to retain
outstanding employees. We will continue to engage our managers,
employees, and unions on ways we could use telework to improve
customer service and other issues.
We often note that Social Security touches the lives of nearly every
American. Be assured that as we continue to evolve, we are committed
to serving everyone including our most vulnerable populations who
often require in person assistance. We are working with the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, claimant
advocates, and other organizations to ensure our services are
accessible to people with low income, limited English proficiency,
mental illness, or facing homelessness. We recently added online
tools and information pages to our website including:
Online resources for People Helping Others access our services;
Online Outreach Materials for Partner Groups; and
Updated information for Faith-Based and Community Groups including a
new toolkit.
As we contemplate the future, we are delivering now. To help improve
deteriorating service, we have added over 6,000 frontline employees
to help you. We decreased the average wait to talk to our 800 Number
agents by one-third and reduced the agent busy rate by over 50
percent in the last two years, and our 800 Number agents handled 1.6
million more calls than they did a year ago.
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column] |
 During the pandemic, we
shifted service to the telephone where local office employees
answered 13 million more calls last year than they did in fiscal
(FY) 2019. They answered your calls in under 3 minutes on average
compared to an average wait of nearly 24 minutes in FY 2019.
For individuals who were denied benefits and requested an appeal, we
quickly shifted to holding hearings by telephone at the start of the
pandemic and then added online video hearings. During the pandemic,
we have continued to reduce the number of people waiting for a
hearing to 376,000 at the end of February 2021, the lowest level in
nearly 20 years. We reduced the average wait for a hearing by over 9
months in the last two years. If you are still waiting for a
hearing, please consider scheduling by telephone or video. You can
find out more information about telephone hearings here and video
hearings here.
The pandemic has significantly disrupted parts of our disability
process, particularly at the state Disability Determination Services
(DDS) that make disability determinations for us. We have provided
the DDSs with additional hiring and overtime to help address a
significant increase in pending initial disability cases. The DDSs
have been able to reduce the number of people waiting for a decision
on initial disability claims by about 100,000 cases since the height
of the pending cases in August 2020. In order to make initial
disability decisions as quickly as possible, and to reduce the
burden on the medical community still stressed from the pandemic, we
have focused our limited resources on completing initial requests
for disability benefits and have reduced the number of continuing
disability reviews we are conducting.
We have made some notable improvements to our online services:
Our redesigned Retirement Benefits Portal helps you prepare and
apply for retirement benefits, with clearer, simplified information.
We improved our registration process for our online my Social
Security account – more than one million people will register for an
account this month.
Our Message Center allows people with a my Social Security account
to access notices online instead of by mail.
We implemented an online payment option for people to repay debts to
Social Security.
We expanded our online Social Security card replacement service to
almost all states. If you need to replace your card, you can request
a replacement through your my Social Security account if you:
Are a U.S. citizen age 18 years or older with a U.S. mailing
address;
Are not requesting a name change or any other change to your card;
and
Have a driver's license or a state-issued identification card from
one of 45 participating states or the District of Columbia. If your
state does not yet participate in this service, check back soon.
More states are added regularly.
The entire team at Social Security is working hard to serve you. We
thank you for your patience during the COVID-19 pandemic and we look
forward to welcoming you back in our offices when it is safe to do
so. We also look forward to continuing to improve all of our service
channels to provide you with convenient options to do business with
us.”
[Jack Myers
Public Affairs Specialist
Social Security Administration] |
