Social Security

The Social Security Administration (SSA), seeking to improve telephone service for the public, instituted a nationwide, toll-free 800 number for its field offices in 1988. GAO's calls to local Social Security offices were often met with busy signals. Being disconnected or being transferred to answering machines were also problems, resulting in GAO being unable to complete 56 percent of the calls it placed. To provide a complete picture of the public's ability to telephone SSA during this period, GAO also obtained busy signal data for SSA's nationwide 800 number. That number had an overall busy rate of about 25 percent. SSA does not maintain data that would allow GAO to develop a comparable call completion rate.

GAO found that: (1) overall, the busy signal rate was 47.3 percent for 834 SSA offices; (2) there was little variation by day of the week or time of day; (3) offices that restored fewer general inquiry lines had higher busy signal rates than offices that restored the same number of telephone lines; (4) SSA did not complete 8.7 percent of the calls because circumstances prevented successful completion of connected calls; (5) situations that prevented call completion included callers being disconnected during the call, encountering some type of recorded message, being placed on hold for more than 2 minutes, and not getting an answer after 10 rings; (6) 60 percent of the calls to offices with fewer general inquiry lines and 51 percent of calls to offices restoring the same number of lines were uncompleted; (7) the SSA nationwide 800 number had an overall busy rate of 25.2 percent; and (8) SSA does not maintain data that would allow a comparable call completion rate.