SSA Disability Redesign

The disability insurance and supplemental security income programs grew rapidly between 1988 and 1995; the number of beneficiaries increased by about 50 percent. The Social Security Administration (SSA), which downsized during that period, has struggled to keep up with the unprecedented growth in applications for disability benefits and appeals of disability decisions. The processing of claims has been delayed, creating hardship for disabled claimants, who often must wait for more than a year for a final decision. SSA is trying to redesign its disability claims process to reduce administrative costs and shorten the time a claimant awaits a decision. This report provides information on the redesign, specifically (1) SSA's vision for and progress in redesigning the disability claims process, (2) issues related to the scope and complexity of the redesign, and (3) SSA's efforts to maintain stakeholders' support.

GAO found that: (1) SSA is about one-third the way through the 6 years it estimated for redesigning the process, but has made relatively little progress in meeting its goals; (2) as of July 1996, SSA had not completed any initiative and testing had not begun for 14 of the 19 initiatives that contain testing requirements; (3) there have not been concrete and measurable accomplishments to keep the support of stakeholders; (4) a number of these initiatives have expanded in scope, thus increasing the time frames required to complete them; (5) increasing the time frames has several disadvantages, such as delaying implementation and heightening the risk of disruption from turnover in senior executives; (6) in addition to delays, SSA has also experienced turnover of senior executives since the beginning of the redesign; (7) although it is difficult to determine if this turnover has had a negative impact on the redesign thus far, continued turnover could result in possible loss of momentum or change of direction; (8) further complicating SSA's redesign efforts are difficulties in maintaining much needed stakeholder support; (9) some federal and state employees, as well as the unions that represent them, are concerned that redesign could mean the loss of jobs; (10) state employees are concerned about SSA's decision to pay federal employees at a higher rate than state employees for the same job; and (11) support from state management officials involved in the disability claims process has been declining steadily.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: