Major Management Challenges and Program Risks
Social Security Administration Gao ID: GAO-03-117 January 1, 2003In its 2001 performance and accountability report on the Social Security Administration (SSA), GAO identified important issues relating to research capacity, its process for determining disability, management of a high-risk Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, future service delivery plans, and protection of information facing the agency. The information GAO presents in this report is intended to help to sustain congressional attention and an agency focus on continuing to make progress in addressing these challenges and ultimately overcoming them. This report is part of a special series of reports on governmentwide and agency-specific issues.
SSA has made progress in addressing problems with the integrity of the SSI program and in playing a more active role in research, evaluation, and policy development. Nevertheless, because of ongoing concerns about the positioning of SSA's disability programs to provide meaningful and timely support to Americans with disabilities, GAO has added modernizing federal disability programs to the 2003 high-risk list. In addition, the agency is continuing to face management challenges. Continue to strengthen the integrity of the SSI program: SSA's progress in developing new tools to improve SSI's financial integrity and management warrants removing the program's high-risk designation. However, the agency must completely implement the reforms it has undertaken and identify and move forward with options to simplify the program's complex policies. Improve programs that provide support for individuals with disabilities: Improving these programs will require updating disability criteria to reflect advances in medicine and technology, and changes in the workforce and developing a comprehensive return-to-work strategy. Further, after years of efforts to redesign its disability claims process, applicants still face a time-consuming process. However, the agency's new Commissioner has made its improvement a priority and has implemented several short-term initiatives to speed up the processing of disability claims on appeal. Better position itself for future service delivery challenges: SSA has conducted extensive analyses of future staff retirements, but it has made decisions about succession planning and allowed early retirements without a concrete service delivery plan to detail how and where it will provide services in the future. In addition, its investments in information technology to facilitate service delivery need to be more closely tied to service delivery goals and objectives. Strengthen controls to protect the personal information SSA develops and maintains: Concerns about the widespread use of social security numbers (SSN), compounded by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have heightened the need to assess how SSNs are issued and protected and how Social Security data are used by law enforcement agencies in safeguarding national security. Since the attacks, SSA has further restricted the assignment of SSNs to individuals not authorized to work and implemented new procedures for verifying the authenticity of identity documents to ensure that only those with a legal right to SSNs receive them.
GAO-03-117, Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Social Security Administration
This is the accessible text file for GAO report number GAO-03-117
entitled 'Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Social
Security Administration' which was released on January 01, 2003.
This text file was formatted by the U.S. General Accounting Office
(GAO) to be accessible to users with visual impairments, as part of a
longer term project to improve GAO products‘ accessibility. Every
attempt has been made to maintain the structural and data integrity of
the original printed product. Accessibility features, such as text
descriptions of tables, consecutively numbered footnotes placed at the
end of the file, and the text of agency comment letters, are provided
but may not exactly duplicate the presentation or format of the printed
version. The portable document format (PDF) file is an exact electronic
replica of the printed version. We welcome your feedback. Please E-mail
your comments regarding the contents or accessibility features of this
document to Webmaster@gao.gov.
Performance and Accountability Series:
January 2003:
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks:
Social Security Administration:
GAO-03-117:
A Glance at the Agency Covered in This Report:
The Social Security Administration‘s mission is to promote the
economic security of the nation‘s people. It administers three major
federal programs that provide benefits to more than 50 million people:
* Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance, together
commonly known as Social Security, provide benefits to retired and
disabled workers and their dependents and survivors. These benefits
are paid from trust funds financed through payroll taxes paid by
workers and their employers and by the self-employed.
* Supplemental Security Income provides income for aged, blind, or
disabled individuals with limited income and resources and is financed
from general tax revenues.
The Social Security Administration‘s Budgetary and Staff Resources
[See PDF for image]
a. Budgetary resources include new budget authority (BA) and
unobligated balances of previous BA. Totals include trust fund as well
as general fund dollars.
b. Budget and staff resources are actuals for FY 1998-2001. FY 2002
are estimates from the FY 2003 budget, which are the latest publicly
available figures on a consistent basis as of January 2003. Actuals
for FY 2002 will be contained in the President‘s FY 2004 budget to be
released in February 2003.
Source: Budget of the United States Government.
[End of figure]
This Series:
This report is part of a special GAO series, first issued in 1999
and updated in 2001, entitled the Performance and Accountability
Series: Major Management Challenges and Program Risks. The 2003
Performance and Accountability Series contains separate reports
covering each cabinet department, most major independent agencies,
and the U.S. Postal Service. The series also includes a governmentwide
perspective on transforming the way the government does business in
order to meet 21st century challenges and address long-term fiscal
needs. The companion 2003 High-Risk Series: An Update identifies
areas at high risk due to either their greater vulnerabilities to
waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement or major challenges associated
with their economy, efficiency, or effectiveness. A list of all of the
reports in this series is included at the end of this report.
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-03-117, a report to Congress included as part of
GAO‘s Performance and Accountability Series
Why GAO Did This Report:
In its 2001 performance and accountability report on the Social
Security Administration (SSA), GAO identified important issues
relating to research capacity, its process for determining disability,
management of a high-risk Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program,
future service delivery plans, and protection of information facing
the agency. The information GAO presents in this report is intended
to help to sustain congressional attention and an agency focus on
continuing to make progress in addressing these challenges and
ultimately overcoming them. This report is part of a special series
of reports on governmentwide and agency-specific issues.
What GAO Found:
SSA has made progress in addressing problems with the integrity of
the SSI program and in playing a more active role in research,
evaluation, and policy development. Nevertheless, because of
ongoing concerns about the positioning of SSA‘s disability programs
to provide meaningful and timely support to Americans with
disabilities, GAO has added modernizing federal disability
programs to the 2003 high-risk list. In addition, the agency
is continuing to face management challenges and needs to:
* Continue to strengthen the integrity of the SSI program.
SSA‘s progress in developing new tools to improve SSI‘s financial
integrity and management warrants removing the program‘s high-risk
designation. However, the agency must completely implement the
reforms it has undertaken and identify and move forward with options
to simplify the program‘s complex policies.
* Improve SSA‘s programs that provide support for individuals with
disabilities. Improving these programs will require updating
disability criteria to reflect advances in medicine and technology,
and changes in the workforce and developing a comprehensive
return-to-work strategy. Further, after years of efforts to redesign
its disability claims process, applicants still face a time-consuming
process. However, the agency‘s new Commissioner has made its
improvement a priority and has implemented several short-term
initiatives to speed up the processing of disability claims on
appeal.
* Better position SSA for future service delivery challenges.
SSA has conducted extensive analyses of future staff retirements,
but it has made decisions about succession planning and allowed
early retirements without a concrete service delivery plan to
detail how and where it will provide services in the future.
In addition, its investments in information technology to
facilitate service delivery need to be more closely tied to
service delivery goals and objectives.
* Strengthen controls to protect the personal information SSA
develops and maintains. Concerns about the widespread use of social
security numbers (SSN), compounded by the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001, have heightened the need to assess how SSNs
are issued and protected and how Social Security data are used by
law enforcement agencies in safeguarding national security. Since
the attacks, SSA has further restricted the assignment of SSNs to
individuals not authorized to work and implemented new procedures
for verifying the authenticity of identity documents to ensure that
only those with a legal right to SSNs receive them.
What Remains to Be Done:
GAO believes that SSA should
* sustain and expand the range of SSI program integrity
initiatives underway,
* develop a long-term strategy for improving timeliness of claims
processing and consistency in decisionmaking,
* develop a comprehensive return-to-work strategy for
individuals with disabilities, and
* develop a concrete service delivery plan.
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-117.
To view the full report, click on the link above. For more
information, contact Barbara D. Bovbjerg at (202) 512-7215
or bovbjergb@gao.gov.
Transmittal Letter:
Major Performance and Accountability Challenges:
GAO Contacts:
Related GAO Products:
Performance and Accountability and High-Risk Series:
This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to
copyright protection in the United States. It may be reproduced
and distributed in its entirety without further permission from
GAO. It may contain copyrighted graphics, images or other
materials. Permission from the copyright holder may be necessary
should you wish to reproduce copyrighted materials separately
from GAO‘s product.
Transmittal Letter January 2003:
The President of the Senate
The Speaker of the House of Representatives:
This report addresses the major management challenges facing the Social
Security Administration (SSA) as it seeks to carry out its goal to
’promote the economic security of the nation‘s people through
compassionate and vigilant leadership in shaping and managing America‘s
social security programs.“ This report discusses the actions that SSA
has taken and that are under way to address the challenges GAO
identified in its Performance and Accountability Series 2 years ago,
and major events that have occurred that significantly influence the
environment in which the agency carries out its mission. Also, this
report summarizes the challenges that remain and further actions that
GAO believes are needed.
This analysis should help the new Congress and the administration carry
out their responsibilities and improve government for the benefit of
the American people. For additional information about this report,
please contact Barbara D. Bovbjerg, Director, Education, Workforce, and
Income Security, at (202) 512-7215 or at bovbjergb@gao.gov.
David M. Walker
Comptroller General of the United States:
Signed by David M. Walker
Major Performance and Accountability Challenges:
In our January 2001 management challenges report,[Footnote 1] we
identified the following performance and management challenges that the
Social Security Administration (SSA) needed to face: (1) playing an
active research, evaluation, and policy development role; (2) improving
its disability determination and return-to-work processes; (3)
sustaining management and oversight of long-standing, high-risk
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) issues; (4) better positioning
itself for future service delivery challenges; and (5) further
strengthening controls to protect SSA information.
Our January 2001 report also identified the long-term solvency and
sustainability of the social security system as one of the most urgent
policy challenges facing the nation and SSA. At issue is how to make
SSA‘s programs fiscally sustainable as life expectancy increases and
large numbers of Americans born in the baby boom generation become
eligible for retirement. Over the past few years, a wide array of
proposals has been put forth to restore Social Security‘s long-term
solvency, and in December 2001, a commission appointed by the President
presented three alternative proposals for reform. However, as the time
approaches when Social Security‘s expenditures will exceed its income,
there is still no consensus on a plan for reforming the social security
system. Although policy decisions regarding Social Security‘s future
are urgently needed, the challenges of addressing this problem are of a
policy nature, and are not yet management challenges. Decisions about
Social Security‘s future, once made, will pose implementation
challenges that may well challenge SSA‘s management capacity farther in
the future.
Since our January 2001 report, two events have occurred that have
influenced the assessment of SSA‘s management challenges. First, the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the indication that some
of the terrorists fraudulently obtained social security numbers (SSN)
have heightened concerns about protecting personal information and
raised new concerns about using personal information such as the SSN.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, there is a greater urgency
to find the proper balance between the widespread and legitimate uses
of personal information such as SSNs by both government and the private
sector and the need to protect SSNs from nonlegitimate access and use.
Second, with the confirmation of a new Commissioner to a 6-year term in
November 2001, SSA has sharpened its focus on addressing the challenges
we previously identified. Building on work begun under the prior
Commissioner, the agency has made considerable progress in addressing
weaknesses in the integrity of the SSI program since our 2001
management challenges report. For example, SSA developed new tools to
verify financial eligibility, established access to electronic
databases to facilitate more timely verification of eligibility
information, and expanded the methods it uses to collect overpayments.
We are satisfied that this progress is sufficient to remove the high-
risk designation of the integrity of the SSI program but caution that
sustained management attention is needed to ensure that the
implementation of all reforms is completed. Therefore, strengthening
the integrity of the SSI program remains a major management challenge.
Likewise, SSA has taken steps to strengthen its research, evaluation,
and policy development activities such as funding outside research
through its Retirement Research Consortium and Disability Research
Institute and we have eliminated this issue as a separate management
challenge. Nevertheless, the maintenance of these capabilities is vital
to informing the debate over the long-term solvency of the social
security system as well as addressing SSA‘s continuing management
challenges, particularly in the disability area.
In spite of the increased focus on addressing the challenges we
identified in our January 2001 report, many challenges remain. For
example, while SSA has taken some steps to plan better for future
service delivery changes and the information technology to support
them, much work remains. Of greater concern are the complex challenges
facing SSA‘s disability programs. SSA paid nearly $80 billion in cash
benefits to nearly 11 million people with a work-related disability and
their families in 2001. These programs are growing, despite greater
opportunities for people with disabilities to work. This growth is
occurring at the same time that SSA is struggling to provide timely,
consistent disability decisions to applicants. While the agency is
taking actions to address these problems in the short term, longer-term
solutions must include more fundamental changes to the programs,
including those that may require legislative action. Because of these
sustained challenges, we have added modernizing federal disability
programs to our 2003 high-risk list.
In summary, SSA faces the following major management challenges that
will further affect its ability to administer critical programs.
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
SSA‘s Progress in Addressing SSI Overpayment Issues Warrants Removal of
High-Risk Designation, but Management Challenges Remain:
The SSI program is the nation‘s largest cash assistance program for the
poor. We designated SSI a high-risk program in 1997, after several
years of reporting on specific instances of abuse and mismanagement,
increasing overpayments, and poor recovery of outstanding SSI
overpayments. The SSI program poses a special challenge for SSA
because, unlike Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability
Insurance (DI), it is a means-tested program; thus, SSA must collect
and verify information on income, resources, and recipient living
arrangements to determine initial and continuing eligibility for the
program.
In response to our high-risk designation, SSA has made sufficient
progress in improving SSI‘s financial integrity and management to
warrant removing its high-risk designation. SSA‘s actions include
developing a major SSI legislative proposal with numerous overpayment
deterrence and recovery provisions. Many of these provisions were
incorporated into the Foster Care Independence Act, which was signed
into law in December 1999. The act directly addresses a number of our
prior recommendations and provides SSA with additional tools to obtain
applicant income and resource information from financial institutions;
imposes a period of ineligibility for applicants who transfer assets to
qualify for SSI benefits; and authorizes the use of credit bureaus,
private collection agencies, interest levies, and other means to
recover overpayments. SSA also obtained separate legislative authority
in 1998 to recover overpayments from former SSI recipients who
currently receive OASI or DI benefits and has recently begun the
process of recovering overpayments from Social Security benefits of
individuals no longer on the SSI rolls.
In addition to obtaining the new legislative authorities, SSA has
initiated a number of internal administrative actions to further
strengthen SSI program integrity. These include using tax refund
offsets for collecting SSI overpayments, an action that SSA said
resulted in $221 million in additional overpayment recoveries from 1998
through the end of calendar year 2001. SSA also uses more frequent
(monthly) automated matches to identify ineligible SSI recipients
living in nursing homes and other institutions. As of January 2001,
SSA‘s field offices also gained on-line access to wage, new-hire, and
unemployment insurance data maintained by the Office of Child Support
Enforcement. These data are key to field staff‘s ability to more
quickly verify employment and income information essential to
determining SSI eligibility and benefit levels. Since 1998, the number
of state agencies allowing direct SSA on-line access to state data has
nearly doubled. In addition, SSA increased the number of SSI financial
redeterminations that it conducted, from about 1.8 million in fiscal
year 1997 to about 2.4 million in fiscal year 2001. These reviews focus
on income and resource factors affecting eligibility and payment
amounts.
SSA‘s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has also increased the level of
resources and staff devoted to investigating SSI fraud and abuse. Key
among these efforts is the formation of Cooperative Disability
Investigation teams in 13 field locations. These teams are designed to
identify fraud and abuse before SSI benefits are approved and paid.
Finally, in response to our prior recommendation,[Footnote 2] SSA has
revised its field office work credit and measurement system to better
reward staff for time spent developing fraud referrals. If properly
implemented, such measures should provide field staff with much needed
incentives for preventing fraud and abuse and controlling overpayments.
Although SSA‘s current initiatives demonstrate a stronger management
commitment to SSI integrity issues and have the potential to
significantly improve program management, their impacts are still not
fully realized. A number of the agency‘s initiatives--especially those
associated with the Foster Care Independence Act--are in the early
planning or implementation stages and have yet to yield results. In
addition, at this stage, the effect of SSA‘s enhanced matching efforts,
on-line access tools, and other internal initiatives on the agency‘s
ability to recover and avoid overpayments is unknown. Also unknown is
the effect of the agency‘s efforts to improve the accuracy of SSI
financial eligibility decisions. Thus, ongoing and outstanding
overpayments are still at high levels, even though the prospects for
reduction have improved.
SSA also has not yet addressed a key program vulnerability--program
complexity--that is associated with SSI overpayments. In prior work, we
have reported that SSI living arrangement and in-kind support and
maintenance policies used by SSA to calculate eligibility and benefit
amounts were complex, prone to error, and a major source of
overpayments.[Footnote 3] In the same report, we also recommended that
SSA develop options for simplifying the program. Last year, SSA‘s
policy office issued a study that discussed various options for
simplifying complex SSI policies. Although SSA is considering various
options, it has not moved forward in recommending specific proposals
for change.
We believe that sustained management attention is necessary to improve
SSI program integrity. Following our most recent review of SSA‘s
progress,[Footnote 4] the agency agreed with our recommendations to:
* sustain and expand its program integrity activities underway and
continue to develop additional tools to improve program operations and
management;
* identify and move forward with implementing cost-effective options
for simplifying complex policies;
* evaluate current policies for applying penalties for individuals who
fail to report essential eligibility information and remove barriers to
their use and effectiveness; and:
* reexamine its policies for waiving recovery of SSI overpayments.
Long-Standing Challenges in SSA‘s Disability Programs Warrant High-Risk
Designation:
SSA‘s disability programs have been growing and are poised to grow even
more rapidly as more baby boomers reach their disability-prone years.
Yet the statutory and regulatory design of these programs remain mired
in concepts from the past and are poorly positioned to provide
meaningful and timely support for Americans with disabilities. These
outdated concepts persist despite scientific advances and economic and
social changes that have redefined the relationship between impairments
and the ability to work. In addition, while SSA has taken some steps in
trying to return beneficiaries to work, it has not developed, as we
have recommended, a comprehensive return-to-work strategy that focuses
on identifying and enhancing beneficiaries‘ work capacities. Finally,
as the programs have grown, SSA has struggled to provide timely and
consistent disability decisions to program applicants. SSA‘s new
Commissioner has made some progress addressing some of these problems
and the agency has implemented some short-term remedies while it is
developing longer-range plans to solve these problems. However, much
more work needs to be done. Ultimately, developing solutions to the
problems facing these disability programs will require consultation and
cooperation between the executive and legislative branches as well as
cross-agency efforts, and will likely require statutory as well as
regulatory action. Our designation of SSA‘s disability programs as high
risk can serve as a catalyst to bring together the partners needed to
resolve these long-standing problems. As we have previously stated, as
the primary manager of multibillion dollar programs and as the entity
with fiduciary responsibility for the trust funds, SSA must take the
lead in forging the partnerships and cooperation that will be needed in
reorienting the federal disability programs.[Footnote 5]
Reexamination of Disability Criteria Needed to Acknowledge Changes in
Medicine as Well as the Economy and Labor Market:
To modernize the disability programs, SSA needs to reexamine the
criteria it uses to determine whether individuals are disabled. The
criteria include medical as well as vocational factors. Over time,
medical and technological advances have provided a better understanding
of how medical conditions affect the ability to work. Likewise, changes
in the labor market have affected the skills needed to perform work and
the settings in which work occurs. However, SSA has not fully updated
its disability criteria to determine who is unable to work to reflect
these changes. Using outdated information raises questions about the
validity of its disability decisions, and SSA risks overcompensating
some individuals while undercompensating or denying compensation
entirely to others.
About 12 years ago, SSA began reviewing relevant medical advances and
updating the criteria used to evaluate disability claims. These updates
include adding or dropping conditions that qualify one for benefits,
modifying the criteria needed to establish the presence and severity of
certain medical conditions, and wording changes for clarification and
guidance in decision making. SSA‘s efforts to update the criteria were
curtailed in the mid-1990s due to staff shortages, competing
priorities, and lack of adequate research on disability issues. The
updates resumed in 1998, but progress has been slow and the lengthy
time frames could undermine the very purpose of an update. Keeping to a
set schedule and making necessary updates could help SSA minimize the
use of outmoded criteria in a large number of disability decisions.
In addition, because of the limited role of treatment in the statutory
and regulatory design of the programs, the updates have not fully
captured the benefits afforded by advances in treatment. SSA‘s
regulations require that in order to receive benefits, claimants must
follow treatment prescribed by the individual‘s physician, if the
treatment can restore his or her ability to work. The implication of
this regulation is that if an individual is not prescribed treatment,
SSA does not consider the possible effects of treatment in the
disability decision, even if the treatment could make the difference
between being able and not being able to work. Moreover, the disability
programs do not require individuals to receive nonprescribed treatment
before or during the time they are assessed for eligibility. Thus,
treatments that can help restore functioning to persons with certain
impairments may not be factored into the disability decision for some
applicants. For example, the effects that medication to control severe
mental illness may have on an applicant‘s ability to work are not
automatically factored into SSA‘s disability decision making. Likewise,
efforts to update the programs‘ criteria have not incorporated
innovations in assistive technologies--such as advanced prosthetics and
wheelchairs--because of similar program design issues.
Further, SSA‘s disability criteria have not incorporated labor market
changes. For applicants who do not have impairments that SSA presumes
are severe enough ordinarily to prevent work, SSA evaluates whether
they are able to work despite their limitations. Individuals who are
unable to perform their previous work and other work in the national
economy are awarded benefits. SSA uses an outdated database--last
updated in 1991--for information on the types and demands of
occupations in the national economy in determining the impact that
impairments have on individuals‘ earning capacity. The agency is
working on identifying a replacement database, but this could take
years to complete.
While SSA has not fully updated its disability criteria, it has started
a number of studies that recognize that medical advances and social
changes require the disability program to evolve. SSA has funded a
project through its Disability Research Institute (DRI)[Footnote 6] to
design a study assessing the validity of its medical criteria as
measures of disability and has begun work to design a study to identify
the most salient job demands compared to a claimant‘s remaining
capacity for work. In addition, SSA has funded a study through the DRI
to examine the impact and cost of assistive technology on employment of
persons with spinal cord injuries.
Updating disability criteria within existing program structures is
prudent, not only as a means to best ensure program integrity, but also
for SSA to meet its fiduciary responsibilities for public funds. To
fully incorporate scientific advances and labor market changes into the
disability programs would require more fundamental change, such as
revisiting the programs‘ basic orientation. Reorienting programs in
this direction would align them with broader social changes that focus
on building and supporting the work capacities of people with
disabilities. Such a reorientation would require examining complex
program design issues such as beneficiaries‘ access to medical care and
assistive technologies, the benefits offered and their associated
costs, mechanisms to return beneficiaries to work, as well as the
integration of SSA‘s programs with other programs and policies
affecting people with disabilities. Success in implementing fundamental
change to the orientation of the disability programs will be dependent
upon consultation and cooperation between the executive and legislative
branches as well as cross-agency efforts, and will likely require
statutory as well as regulatory action.
SSA Lacks a Comprehensive Strategy to Return People with Disabilities
to Work:
The number of working-age beneficiaries of the DI and SSI programs has
increased by 61 percent over the past 10 years, even as changes in
medicine, technology, society, and the nature of work have increased
the potential for some people with disabilities to return to, or remain
in, the labor force. Legislative changes have also focused on returning
disability beneficiaries to work. The Americans with Disabilities Act
of 1990 supports the premise that people with disabilities can work and
have the right to work, and the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives
Improvement Act of 1999 increased beneficiaries‘ access to vocational
services. Indeed, many beneficiaries with disabilities indicate that
they want to work, and many may be able to work in today‘s labor market
if they receive needed support. In 1996, we recommended that SSA place
a greater priority on helping disabled beneficiaries work,[Footnote 7]
and the agency has taken a number of actions to improve its return-to-
work practices. But even with these actions, SSA has achieved poor
results in this arena and few DI and SSI beneficiaries leave the
disability rolls to work.
Even in light of the Ticket to Work Act, SSA will continue to face
difficulties in returning beneficiaries to work, in part, owing to
weaknesses, both statutory and policy, in the design of the disability
programs. As we have reported in the past, these weaknesses include an
either-or disability decision-making process that characterizes
individuals as either unable to work or having the capacity to work and
therefore ineligible for benefits.[Footnote 8] This either-or process
produces a strong incentive for applicants to establish their inability
to work to qualify for benefits.
Moreover, return-to-work services are offered only after a lengthy
determination process. Because applicants are either unemployed or only
marginally connected to the labor force when they apply and remain so
during the eligibility determination process, their skills, work
habits, and motivation to work are likely to deteriorate during this
wait. Thus, individuals who have successfully established their
disability may have little reason or desire to attempt rehabilitation
and work. Unlike some private sector disability insurers and foreign
social insurance systems, SSA does not incorporate into its initial or
continuing eligibility assessment process an evaluation of what is
needed for an individual to return to work. Instead of receiving
assistance to stay in the workforce or return to work--and thus to stay
off the long-term disability rolls--an individual can obtain assistance
through DI or SSI only by proving his or her inability to work. And
even in its efforts to redesign the decision-making process, SSA has
yet to incorporate into these initiatives an evaluation of what an
individual may need to return to work.
In addition, SSA has made limited progress in developing baseline data
to measure progress in the return-to-work area. In June 2000, we
reported that many of SSA‘s fiscal year 2001 performance measures were
not sufficiently results-oriented, making it difficult to track
progress.[Footnote 9] SSA‘s fiscal year 2002 performance plan showed
that it had begun to incorporate more outcome-oriented performance
indicators that could support its efforts in this area. Two new
indicators, in particular, could help SSA gauge progress: (1) the
percentage increase in the number of DI beneficiaries whose benefits
are suspended or terminated owing to employment and (2) the percentage
increase in the number of disabled SSI beneficiaries no longer
receiving cash benefits. However, SSA did not set specific performance
targets for these measures, but instead established interim indicators
to measure the start of work activity. In its 2003 performance plan,
SSA has refined these interim indicators to more closely track outcomes
related to employment, but it has postponed implementing the permanent
indicators from 2005 until 2007 while it develops new computer systems
to collect data to measure these indicators.
SSA has nevertheless recently stepped up its return-to-work efforts, in
part, in response to mandates from the Ticket to Work legislation. For
example, it has (1) established an Office of Employment Support
Programs to promote the employment of beneficiaries with disabilities;
(2) recruited more than 400 public or private entities to provide
vocational rehabilitation, employment, and other support services to
beneficiaries under the Ticket to Work Program; (3) raised and indexed
to a measure of wage growth the limit on the amount a DI beneficiary
can earn from work and still receive benefits to encourage people with
disabilities to work;
(4) funded 12 state partnership agreements that are intended to help
the states develop services to increase beneficiary employment; (5)
provided funding to more than 100 community-based organizations to help
provide work incentives planning and assistance to beneficiaries; and
(6) completed a pilot study on the deployment of work incentive
specialists to SSA field offices and is currently determining how to
best implement the position nationally.
Further, SSA has progressed in researching issues related to return-to-
work through its DRI. Current research underway includes: (1) designing
a demonstration to provide earlier return-to-work services to DI
applicants who are likely to be found eligible; (2) exploring the paths
DI applicants and beneficiaries took to the benefit program to
determine whether SSA might be able to redirect some applicants to work
rather than a prolonged stay on the benefit rolls; (3) examining how
the onset of disability early in life affects later employment
outcomes; and (4) analyzing and facilitating the transition to
employment of youths with disabilities.
While these efforts represent positive steps in trying to return people
with disabilities to work, much remains to be done. As we have
recommended previously, SSA still needs to move forward in developing a
comprehensive return-to-work strategy that integrates, as appropriate,
earlier intervention, including earlier and more effective
identification of work capacities and the expansion of such capacities
by providing essential return-to-work assistance for applicants and
beneficiaries.[Footnote 10] Adopting such a strategy is likely to
require improvements to staff skill levels and areas of expertise, as
well as changes to the disability determination process. It will also
require fundamental changes to the underlying philosophy and direction
of the DI and SSI programs, as well as legislative changes in some
cases. Policymakers will need to carefully weigh the implications of
such changes. Nevertheless, we remain concerned that the absence of
such a strategy and accompanying performance plan goals may hinder
SSA‘s efforts to make significant strides in the return-to-work area,
including its efforts to improve the disability determination process.
An improved return-to-work strategy could benefit both the
beneficiaries who want to work and the American taxpayer.
Results of Efforts to Improve the Disability Claims Process Have Been
Disappointing:
SSA‘s disability determination process is time-consuming, complex, and
expensive. The agency has been working for years to improve this
process, yet, ensuring the quality and timeliness of its disability
decisions remains one of SSA‘s greatest challenges. Individuals who are
initially denied benefits by SSA and appeal their claims may wait a
year or more for a final decision on their eligibility. These long
waits result, in part, from complex and fragmented decision-making
processes that are laden with many layers of reviews and multiple
handoffs from one person to another. The cost of administering the DI
and SSI programs reflects the demanding nature of the process. Although
SSI and DI program benefits account for less than
20 percent of the total benefit payments made by SSA, they consume
nearly 55 percent of the annual administrative resources.
In addition to its difficulties in processing claims, SSA has also had
difficulty ensuring that decisions regarding a claimant‘s eligibility
for disability benefits are accurate and consistent across all levels
of the decision-making process. Our work shows that in fiscal year
2000, about
40 percent of the applicants whose cases were denied at the initial
level appealed this decision and about two-thirds of those who appealed
were awarded benefits.[Footnote 11] This happens in part because
decision makers at the initial level use a different approach to
evaluate claims and make decisions than those at the appellate level.
The inconsistency of decisions at these two levels has raised questions
about the fairness, integrity, and cost of SSA‘s disability programs.
In 1994, SSA laid out a plan to address these problems; however, that
plan and three subsequent revisions have yielded only limited success.
Among other things, SSA planned to develop a streamlined decision-
making and appeal process, more consistent guidance and training for
decision makers at all levels of the process, and an improved process
for reviewing the quality of eligibility decisions. Our reviews of
SSA‘s efforts found that the agency had accomplished little.[Footnote
12] In some cases, the plans were too large and too complex to keep on
track, and the results of many of the initiatives that were tested fell
far short of expectations. Moreover, the agency was not able to garner
consistent stakeholder support and cooperation for its proposed
changes. Despite the overall disappointing progress, the agency did
issue formal guidance in a number of areas intended to improve the
consistency of decisions between the initial and appellate levels.
Overall, however, significant problems persist and difficult decisions
remain. For example, SSA is currently collecting data on the results
from an initiative known as the Prototype, which was implemented in 10
states in October 1999 to test several modifications to the disability
determination process. Although interim data indicated that the
Prototype would result in more awards made correctly at the initial
level, it also would increase the number of appeals of denied claims.
This, in turn, would result in both higher administrative and benefit
costs and lengthen the wait for final decisions on claims. As a result,
SSA modified the Prototype initiative and is collecting more data on
results. It remains to be seen whether these revisions will retain the
positive results from the Prototype while also controlling
administrative and program costs.
Even more pressing in the near term is the management and workload
crisis that SSA faces in its hearings offices. The agency‘s 1999 plan
included an initiative to overhaul operations at its hearing offices to
increase efficiency and significantly reduce processing times at that
level; however, this nationwide effort has not only failed to achieve
its goals, it has, in some cases, made things worse. The initiative has
suffered, in part, from problems associated with implementing large-
scale changes too quickly without resolving known problems. As a
result, the average case processing time slowed and backlogs of cases
waiting to be processed approached crisis levels. We have recommended
that the Commissioner act quickly to implement short-term strategies to
reduce the backlog and develop a long-range strategy for a more
permanent solution to the backlog and efficiency problems at the Office
of Hearings and Appeals.[Footnote 13] According to SSA officials, they
have implemented several short-term initiatives not requiring statutory
or regulatory changes to reduce hearing office processing times and
backlogs. These include new formats and software to facilitate the
issuance of favorable decisions, guidelines for the issuance of
favorable bench decisions, and awarding contracts to speed the assembly
of hearing files.
Finally, SSA‘s 1994 plan to redesign the claims process called for the
agency to revamp its existing quality assurance system. However,
because of disagreement among SSA and state employee groups, unions,
and interest groups on how to accomplish this difficult objective,
progress in this area has been limited. We agreed with a March 2001
contractor assessment that a significant overhaul was needed to
encompass a more comprehensive view of quality management and
recommended that SSA develop an action plan for implementing a more
comprehensive and sophisticated quality assurance program.[Footnote
14] Since then, the new Commissioner has signaled the high priority she
attaches to this effort by appointing a senior manager for quality who
reports directly to her. The senior manager and her team have devised a
4-phase strategy to establish a quality oriented approach to all SSA
processes. As part of the first phase, the team has developed an agency
level definition of quality that incorporates the elements of accuracy,
timeliness, productivity, cost, and customer service.
The limited results of some of these initiatives can be linked, in
part, to slow progress in incorporating technological improvements into
the disability determination process. As originally envisioned, SSA‘s
redesign plan depended on these improvements. After spending about 7
years designing and developing a new computer software application to
automate the disability claims process, SSA decided to discontinue the
initiative in July 1999, citing software performance problems and
delays in developing the software.
In August 2000, SSA issued a new management plan to develop the
agency‘s electronic disability system. SSA expects this effort to move
the agency toward a paperless disability claims process. The strategy
consists of several key components, including (1) an electronic claims
intake process for the field offices, (2) enhanced state disability
determination service agencies‘ claims processing systems, and (3)
technology processes necessary to support the operation of Office of
Hearing and Appeals. The components are to be linked to one another
through the use of an electronic folder that is being designed to
transmit data from one processing location to another and to serve as a
data repository, storing documents that are keyed in, scanned, or
faxed. SSA is currently implementing the automated intake process in
its field offices. In addition, it recently expanded the capabilities
of its Internet application process to include collecting information
about the medical treatment and work history needed to process
disability claims. Further, SSA has stepped up its schedule for
implementing the electronic disability system from late in 2005 to
January 2004. As SSA proceeds with this new system, it is imperative
that the agency effectively identify, track, and manage the costs,
benefits, schedule, and risks associated with the system‘s full
development and implementation. Moreover, SSA must ensure that it has
the right mix of skills and capabilities to support this initiative and
that desired end results are achieved.
SSA is at a crossroads in its efforts to redesign and improve its
disability claims process. Since its start in 1994, SSA‘s redesign
initiatives have yielded limited progress and often disappointing
results. SSA‘s new Commissioner has acknowledged the limited progress
to date, has made the issue one of the agency‘s priorities, and has
taken the first steps to address this problem. However, as we testified
in May 2002, it may be appropriate, given the agency‘s past experience,
for SSA to undertake a new and comprehensive analysis of the
fundamental issues impeding progress.[Footnote 15] Such an analysis
should include reassessing the root causes contributing to its problems
and would encompass concerns raised by the Social Security Advisory
Board,[Footnote 16] such as the fragmentation and structural problems
in the agency‘s disability determination process. The outcome of this
analysis may, in some cases, require legislative changes.
SSA Needs to Better Position Itself for Future Service Delivery
Challenges:
Among federal agencies, SSA has long been viewed as one of the leaders
in service delivery. SSA considers service delivery as one of its top
priorities, and its current performance plan includes specific goals
and strategies to provide accurate, timely, and useful service to the
public. However, three factors-(1) the expected increase in demand for
services as baby boomers retire, (2) the concurrent retirement of a
large part of its own workforce, and (3) changing customer
expectations-could hamper SSA‘s ability to provide high-quality service
over the next decade and beyond. In response to these challenges, SSA
has initiated several workforce activities based on its analysis of
future retirements and has begun to envision what its future service
delivery might be. In addition, it has begun to expand its electronic
service delivery capabilities to meet changing customer expectations.
However, without a service delivery plan that lays out a detailed
blueprint for how service will be delivered in the future, SSA cannot
ensure that it will effectively cope with its future service
challenges. Further, as the agency transitions to electronic processes,
it will be challenged to think strategically about its information
technology (IT) investments and to ensure their effectiveness by
linking them to service delivery goals and performance.
SSA Needs to Develop a Concrete Service Delivery Plan:
Demand for services will grow rapidly as the baby boom generation ages
and enters the disability prone years and retirement soon after. By
2010, SSA expects worker applications for DI to increase by as much as
32 percent over 2000 levels. As we have observed earlier in this
report, SSA already has trouble managing its disability determination
workload; adding additional cases without rectifying serious case
processing issues will only make things worse. Furthermore, by 2010,
SSA projects that applications for retirement benefits will also
increase dramaticallyæby 31 percent over the 2000 levels.
SSA‘s ability to provide high-quality service delivery is also
potentially weakened by challenges regarding its workforce. First,
SSA‘s workforce is aging, and SSA is predicting a retirement wave that
will peak in the years 2007 through 2010, when it expects about 2,500
employees to retire each year. By 2010, SSA projects that about 37
percent of its almost 62,000 employees will retire. The percentage is
higher for employees in SSA‘s supervisory or managerial ranks. In
particular, more than 70 percent of SSA‘s upper-level managers and
executives (GS-14, GS-15, and SES level) are expected to retire by
2010. Second, SSA will need to increase staff skills to deal with
changing customer expectations and needs. SSA‘s staff will need to
obtain and continually update the skills needed to use the most current
technology available to serve the public in a more convenient, cost
effective, and secure manner. At the same time, some aspects of SSA‘s
customer service workload will likely become more time consuming and
labor intensive, owing primarily to the growing proportion of SSA‘s
non-English speaking customers and the rising number of disability
cases involving mental impairments. Both situations result in more
complex cases that require diverse staff skills.
SSA has a number of workforce initiatives under way to help it prepare
for the future. For example, as required by law, SSA developed a
workforce transition plan to lay out actions to help ensure that its
workforce will be able to handle future service delivery challenges. In
addition, recognizing that it will shortly be facing the prospect of
increasing retirements, SSA conducted a study that predicts staff
retirements and attrition each year, from 1999 to 2020, by major job
position and agency component. SSA also began to take steps to fill its
expected leadership gap. We have long stressed the importance of
succession planning and formal programs to develop and train managers
at all levels of SSA. As early as 1993, we recommended that SSA make
succession planning a permanent aspect of its workforce planning and
evaluate the adequacy of its investments in management training and
development.[Footnote 17] SSA created three new leadership development
programs to help prepare selected staff to assume mid-and top-level
leadership positions at the agency. Overall, many of the efforts being
made today are consistent with principles of human capital management,
which is fundamental to the federal government‘s ability to serve the
American people.
However, SSA is taking these human capital measures in the absence of a
concrete service delivery plan to help guide its investments. We also
recommended in 1993 that SSA complete such a service delivery plan to
ensure that its human capital and other key investments are put to the
best use.[Footnote 18] In 1998, the agency took a first step by
beginning a multiyear project to monitor and measure the needs,
expectations, priorities, and satisfaction of customer groups, major
stakeholders, and its workforce. In 2000, SSA completed a document that
articulates how it envisions the agency functioning in the
future.[Footnote 19] For example, SSA anticipates offering services in
person, over the telephone, and via the Internet; according to this
document, its telephonic and electronic access services will be
equipped with sophisticated voice recognition and language translation
features, and work will be accomplished through a paperless process. In
its service vision document, SSA also states that it will rely heavily
on a workforce with diverse and updated skills to accomplish its
mission. Although this new vision represents a positive step for the
agency toward acknowledging and preparing for future service delivery
challenges, it is too broad and general to be useful in making specific
information technology and workforce decisions. We have stressed that
this document should be followed by a more detailed service delivery
plan that spells out who will provide what type of services in the
future, where these services will be made available, and the steps and
timetables for accomplishing needed changes. SSA needs this plan to
ensure that its investments in its workforce and technology are
consistent with and fully support its future approach to service
delivery.
SSA Needs Effective Management of Information Technology to Support
Future Service Delivery:
SSA has devoted considerable time and effort to identifying strategies
to meet its goal of providing world-class service. For example, SSA has
begun expanding its electronic service delivery capability--offering
retirees the option of applying for benefits on-line as well as
pursuing other on-line or Internet options to facilitate customer
access to the agency‘s information and services. Yet SSA‘s overall
success in meeting its service delivery challenge will depend on how
effectively it manages its information technology initiatives and links
its investments in this area to its service delivery goals and
performance. Further, its actions and decisions must effectively
address dual modes of service delivery--its traditional services via
telephone, face-to-face, and mail contacts that are supported primarily
by its mainframe computer operations, as well as a more interactive,
on-line, Web based environment aimed at delivering more readily
accessible services in response to changing customer expectations.
Our evaluation of SSA‘s information technology policies, procedures,
and practices in five key areas--investment management, enterprise
architecture, software development and acquisition, human capital, and
information security--found that the agency has many important
information technology management policies and procedures in place. For
instance, it has sound policies and procedures for software development
that were consistent with best practices. However, SSA has not
implemented its policies and procedures uniformly and has not
established several key policies and procedures essential to ensuring
that its information technology investments and human capital were
effectively managed. We have noted weaknesses in each of the five key
areas and recommended in this report 20 specific actions to improve
SSA‘s information technology management practices.[Footnote 20] SSA has
agreed with all of the recommendations.
To illustrate, in making decisions on technology projects, SSA lacks
key criteria and regular oversight for ensuring consistent investment
management and decision-making practices. It also does not always
consider costs, benefits, schedules, and risks when making project
selections and as part of its ongoing management controls. Without such
information, SSA cannot be assured that its investment proposals will
provide the most cost-effective solutions and achieve measurable and
specific program-related benefits, such as high-quality service
delivered on time, within cost, and to the customer‘s satisfaction.
Further, given competing priorities and funding needs, SSA will need
such information to make essential trade offs among its information
technology investment proposals and set priorities that can maximize
the potential for both short-and long-term improvements to services
provided to the public.
As SSA pursues Internet and Web based applications to better serve its
customers, it must ensure that these efforts are aligned with the
agency‘s information technology environment. A key element for
achieving this is the successful implementation of an enterprise
architecture, a blueprint for systematically and completely defining
its current (baseline) and desired (target) environment. It is
essential for developing and implementing information systems, and
inserting emerging technologies that optimally support the agency‘s
mission. We found that SSA has not completed key elements of its
enterprise architecture, including (1) finalizing its enterprise
architecture framework, (2) updating and organizing its architectures
and architecture definitions under the framework, and
(3) reflecting its future service delivery vision and e-business goals.
As SSA moves forward in implementing electronic services and other
technologies, its architecture will be critical to defining, managing,
and enforcing adherence to the framework required to support its
current and future information processing needs. In surveying 116
agencies across the federal government, we found the use of enterprise
architectures by many agencies to be a work in progress, with much left
to be accomplished.[Footnote 21] Even within this group, SSA is at a
relatively low level of maturity in enterprise architecture management.
SSA plans to rely extensively on software-intensive systems to help
achieve processing efficiencies and improved customer service. SSA
established new policies and procedures to enhance the quality of its
software development. However, our evaluation found that SSA was not
consistently applying them to its software development projects. In
particular, SSA had not applied sound management and technical
practices in developing the electronic disability system.[Footnote 22]
The use of sound, disciplined software development processes is
critical to ensuring that SSA delivers quality software on schedule and
within established cost estimates and can meet its goal of developing a
technological infrastructure to support its service delivery vision.
As SSA places increased emphasis on using information technology to
support new ways of delivering service, it must also ensure that it
effectively manages its human capital to anticipate, plan for, and
support its requirements. However, SSA had not taken all of the
necessary steps to ensure the adequacy of its future information
technology workforce. For instance, although SSA had begun evaluating
its short-and long-term information technology needs, it had not linked
its information technology staffing needs to the competencies required
to meet the agency‘s mission goals. Doing so is necessary to ensure
that SSA‘s plans project workforce needs far enough in advance to allow
adequate time for staff recruitment and hiring, skills refreshment and
training, or outsourcing considerations. Shortcomings in SSA‘s
information technology human capital management could have serious
ramifications as the agency moves toward making larger investments in
new electronic service delivery options, such as Internet applications.
Developing Internet applications represents a new era for SSA--one in
which the agency must ensure that it has enough of the right people and
skills to bring its electronic service delivery plan to fruition.
As SSA proceeds with the development and implementation of Internet and
Web based initiatives, the need for a strong program to address threats
to the security and integrity of its operations will grow. Without
proper safeguards, these initiatives pose enormous risks that make it
easier for individuals and groups with malicious intentions to intrude
into inadequately protected systems and use such access to obtain
sensitive information, commit fraud, disrupt operations, or launch
attacks against other organizations‘ sites.
SSA has made progress in addressing the information protection issues
raised in prior years. Specifically, during fiscal year 2002, the
agency issued final risk models to standardize platform security
configurations, established monitoring tools for enforcement of
standards, improved firewall controls, continued progress on a program
to monitor and control system user access requirements, strengthened
physical security controls in regional offices, and implemented
procedures for enhanced review of security violations on the mainframe.
Nonetheless, weaknesses in SSA‘s information security program continue
to threaten its ability to effectively mitigate the risk of
unauthorized access to, and disclosure of, sensitive information. A
recent audit by an independent public accounting firm included
recommendations that SSA continue to conduct periodic risk assessments
to identify inherent vulnerabilities from emerging technologies,
continue to implement risk models to achieve compliance with SSA
standard platform security configuration settings, accelerate the
program to ensure that sensitive systems are adequately addressed,
ensure use of the new procedures for reviewing security violations on
its mainframe, ensure that employees with access to sensitive SSA data
and equipment are properly assessed to determine their eligibility for
access, coordinate contingency planning among SSA components, and
continue to enhance the overall security policy and improve physical
security controls for the disability determination services sites.
The Need to Protect Personal Information Has Gained New Urgency:
SSA is responsible for issuing SSNs, which are used to record wage
data, maintain earnings records, and efficiently administer its benefit
programs.[Footnote 23] In addition, the SSN is also used by other
government agencies as well as the private sector. This widespread use
offers many benefits; however, combined with an increase in reports of
identity theft, such use has raised public concern over how SSNs and
other personal information are being used and protected. Moreover, the
growth of the Internet, which can make personal information contained
in electronic records more readily accessible to the general public,
has heightened this concern. Finally, the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, and the indication that some of the terrorists
fraudulently obtained SSNs have added new urgency to the need to assess
how SSNs are issued and protected and how Social Security data are used
in safeguarding national security.
Indeed, SSA has an important role to play in protecting the integrity
of the SSN. Given the widespread use of SSNs, the agency is considering
steps to ensure that it is taking all necessary precautions to prevent
individuals who are not entitled to SSNs from obtaining them. This may
require SSA to find a new balance between two competing goals: the need
to take time to verify documents submitted during the application
process and the desire to serve the applicant as quickly as possible.
Since the terrorist attacks, SSA has had to reexamine the process by
which it enumerates-gives SSNs and cards to individuals-to ensure that
only those with a legal right to SSNs receive them. Since November 2001
SSA has been working with the Immigration and Naturalization Service
and the Department of State to improve the verification of documents
needed to assign SSNs to noncitizens and several initiatives are in the
planning stages. In addition, SSA now verifies with the issuer of the
record the birth records of all individuals over the age of 1 applying
for original SSNs. Further, it no longer assigns SSNs for the sole
purpose of obtaining driver‘s licenses to individuals who are not
authorized to work. The agency also provided refresher training to
staff involved in assigning SSNs and imposed additional management
reviews.
Once SSA has issued an SSN, however, it has little control over how the
number is used by other government agencies and the private sector. We
recently reported that SSNs are widely used across multiple agencies
and departments at all levels of government.[Footnote 24] They are used
by agencies that deliver benefits and services to the public as a
convenient and efficient means of managing records. More importantly,
these agencies rely on SSNs when they share data with one another, for
example, to make sure that only eligible individuals receive benefits
and to collect any outstanding debt that individuals owe the
government. Although these agencies are taking steps to safeguard the
SSNs from improper disclosure, our work identified potential weaknesses
in the security of information systems at all levels of government. In
addition, SSNs are widely found in public records, that is, documents
that are routinely made available to the public. Although some
government agencies and courts are trying innovative approaches to
prevent the SSN from appearing on public records, not all agencies
maintaining public records have adopted these approaches. Moreover,
increasing numbers of departments are considering placing or planning
to place documents that may contain SSNs on the Internet, which would
make these numbers much more readily available to others, raising the
risk of their misuse.
We also found that SSNs are one of three personal identifiers most
often sought by identity thieves, and that SSNs are often used to
generate additional false documents, which can be used to set up false
identities. What is harder to determine is a clear answer as to where
identity thieves obtain the SSNs they misuse. Ultimately, the nation,
with help from SSA, must grapple with the need to find the proper
balance between the widespread and legitimate uses of personal
information such as SSNs, by both government and the private sector,
and the need to protect individual identity.
At the same time that SSA continues to protect SSNs and other personal
information in its records, law enforcement needs for information have
become ever more pressing. Law enforcement agencies at all levels of
government seek assistance from SSA in obtaining information crucial to
criminal investigations and, more recently, to protecting the homeland.
The challenge SSA faces today in protecting the SSN will increasingly
require a balance between providing information needed to protect
against terrorism and other violent crimes and protecting individual
privacy and preventing identity theft.
[End of section]
GAO Contacts:
Subject(s) covered in this report: Future service delivery; ;
Protection and use of personal information such as social security
numbers; Contact person: Barbara D. Bovbjerg, Director; Education,
Workforce, and; Income Security Issues; (202) 512-7215;
bovbjergb@gao.gov.
Subject(s) covered in this report: Integrity of the Supplemental
Security Income program; ; Disability programs; Contact person: Robert
E. Robertson, Director; Education, Workforce, and; Income Security
Issues; (202) 512-7215; robertsonr@gao.gov.
Subject(s) covered in this report: Information technology to support
service delivery; Contact person: Joel C. Willemssen, Managing
Director; Information Technology; (202) 512-6408; willemssenj@gao.gov.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Related GAO Products:
Performance and Accountability Series:
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: A Governmentwide
Perspective. GAO-01-241. Washington, D.C.: January 2001.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Social Security
Administration. GAO-01-261. Washington, D.C.: January 2001.
High-Risk Series: An Update. GAO-01-273. Washington, D.C.: January
2001.
Continue to Strengthen the Integrity of the SSI Program:
Supplemental Security Income: Progress Made in Detecting and Recovering
Overpayments, but Management Attention Should Continue. GAO-02-849.
Washington, D.C.: September 16, 2002.
Supplemental Security Income: Status of Efforts to Improve Overpayment
Detection and Recovery. GAO-02-962T. Washington, D.C.: July 25, 2002.
Supplemental Security Income: Additional Actions Needed to Reduce
Program Vulnerability to Fraud and Abuse. GAO/HEHS-99-151. Washington,
D.C.: September 15, 1999.
Supplemental Security Income: Long-Standing Issues Require More Active
Management and Program Oversight. GAO/T-HEHS-99-51. Washington, D.C.:
February 3, 1999.
Supplemental Security Income: Action Needed on Long-Standing Problems
Affecting Program Integrity. GAO/HEHS-98-158. Washington, D.C.:
September 14, 1998.
Improve Programs That Provide Support for Individuals with
Disabilities:
SSA and VA Disability Programs: Re-Examination of Disability Criteria
Needed to Help Ensure Program Integrity. GAO-02-597. Washington, D.C.:
August 9, 2002.
Social Security Disability: Disappointing Results From SSA‘s Efforts to
Improve the Disability Claims Process Warrant Immediate Attention. GAO-
02-322. Washington, D.C.: February 27, 2002.
SSA Disability: SGA Levels Appear to Affect the Work Behavior of
Relatively Few Beneficiaries, but More Data Needed. GAO-02-224.
Washington, D.C.: January 16, 2002.
SSA Disability: Other Programs May Provide Lessons for Improving
Return-to-Work Efforts. GAO-01-153. Washington, D.C.: January 12, 2001.
Social Security Disability: SSA Has Had Mixed Success in Efforts to
Improve Caseload Management. GAO/T-HEHS-00-22. Washington, D.C.:
October 21, 1999.
SSA Disability Redesign: Actions Needed to Enhance Future Progress.
GAO/HEHS-99-25. Washington, D.C.: March 12, 1999.
Social Security Disability Insurance: Multiple Factors Affect
Beneficiaries‘ Ability to Return to Work. GAO/HEHS-98-39. Washington,
D.C.: January 12, 1998.
Social Security: Disability Programs Lag in Promoting Return to Work.
GAO/HEHS-97-46. Washington, D.C.: March 17, 1997.
SSA Disability: SSA Return-to-Work Strategies From Other Systems May
Improve Federal Programs. GAO-HEHS-96-133. Washington, D.C.: July 11,
1996.
SSA Disability: Program Redesign Necessary to Encourage Return to Work.
GAO/HEHS-96-62. Washington, D.C.: April 24, 1996.
Better Position SSA for Future Service Delivery Challenges, Including
Information Technology:
Information Security: Additional Actions Needed to Fully Implement
Reform Legislation. GAO-02-470T. Washington, D.C.: March 6, 2002.
Information Technology: Enterprise Architecture Use Across the Federal
Government Can Be Improved. GAO-02-6. Washington, D.C.: February 19,
2002.
Information Technology Management: Social Security Administration
Practices Can Be Improved. GAO-01-961. Washington, D.C.: August 21,
2001.
Information Security: Serious and Widespread Weaknesses Persist at
Federal Agencies. GAO/AIMD-00-295. Washington, D.C.: September 6, 2000.
SSA Customer Service: Broad Service Delivery Plan Needed to Address
Future Challenges. GAO/T-HEHS/AIMD-00-75. Washington, D.C.: February
10, 2000.
Social Security Administration: Update on Year 2000 and Other Key
Information Technology Initiatives. GAO/T-AIMD-99-259. Washington,
D.C.: July 29, 1999.
Information Security: Serious Weaknesses Place Critical Federal
Operations and Assets at Risk. GAO/AIMD-98-92. Washington, D.C.:
September 23, 1998.
Strengthen Controls to Protect the Personal Information SSA Develops
and Maintains:
Social Security Numbers: Government Benefits from SSN Use but Could
Provide Better Safeguards. GAO-02-352. Washington, D.C.: May 31, 2002.
Social Security Numbers: SSNs Are Widely Used by Government and Could
Be Better Protected. GAO-02-691T. Washington, D.C.: April 29, 2002.
Identity Theft: Prevalence and Cost Appear to be Growing. GAO-02-363.
Washington, D.C.: March 1, 2002.
Social Security: Government and Commercial Use of the Social Security
Number Is Widespread. GAO/HEHS-99-28. Washington, D.C.: February 16,
1999.
[End of section]
Performance and Accountability and High-Risk Series:
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: A Governmentwide
Perspective. GAO-03-95.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of
Agriculture. GAO-03-96.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Commerce.
GAO-03-97.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Defense.
GAO-03-98.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Education.
GAO-03-99.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Energy.
GAO-03-100.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Health and
Human Services. GAO-03-101.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Homeland
Security. GAO-03-102.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Housing
and Urban Development. GAO-03-103.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of the
Interior. GAO-03-104.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Justice.
GAO-03-105.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Labor.
GAO-03-106.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of State.
GAO-03-107.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of
Transportation. GAO-03-108.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of the
Treasury. GAO-03-109.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Veterans
Affairs. GAO-03-110.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: U.S. Agency for
International Development. GAO-03-111.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Environmental Protection
Agency. GAO-03-112.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Federal Emergency
Management Agency. GAO-03-113.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: National Aeronautics and
Space Administration. GAO-03-114.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Office of Personnel
Management. GAO-03-115.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Small Business
Administration. GAO-03-116.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Social Security
Administration. GAO-03-117.
Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: U.S. Postal Service.
GAO-03-118.
High-Risk Series: An Update. GAO-03-119.
High-Risk Series: Strategic Human Capital Management. GAO-03-120.
High-Risk Series: Protecting Information Systems Supporting the Federal
Government and the Nation‘s Critical Infrastructures. GAO-03-121.
High-Risk Series: Federal Real Property. GAO-03-122.
FOOTNOTES
[1] U.S. General Accounting Office, Major Management Challenges and
Program Risks: Social Security Administration, GAO-01-261 (Washington,
D.C.: January 2001).
[2] U.S. General Accounting Office, Supplemental Security Income:
Action Needed on Long-Standing Problems Affecting Program Integrity,
GAO/HEHS-98-158 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 14, 1998).
[3] GAO/HEHS-98-158.
[4] U.S. General Accounting Office, Supplemental Security Income:
Progress Made in Detecting and Recovering Overpayments, but Management
Attention Should Continue, GAO-02-849 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 16,
2002).
[5] U.S. General Accounting Office, SSA Disability: Return-to-Work
Strategies From Other Systems May Improve Federal Programs, GAO/HEHS-
96-133 (Washington, D.C.: July 11, 1996).
[6] SSA awarded a 5-year cooperative agreement in 2000 to the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to participate in its
Disability Research Institute to plan and conduct a broad range of
research that will develop disability policy information.
[7] U.S. General Accounting Office, SSA Disability: Program Redesign
Necessary to Encourage Return to Work, GAO/HEHS-96-62 (Washington,
D.C.: Apr. 24, 1996).
[8] GAO/HEHS-96-62.
[9] U.S. General Accounting Office, Observations on the Social Security
Administration‘s Fiscal Year 1999 Performance Report and Fiscal Year
2001 Performance Plan, GAO/HEHS-00-126R (Washington, D.C.: June 30,
2000).
[10] GAO/HEHS-96-133.
[11] U.S. General Accounting Office, Social Security Disability:
Efforts to Improve Claims Process Have Fallen Short and Further Action
is Needed, GAO-02-826T (Washington, D.C.: June 11, 2002).
[12] U.S. General Accounting Office, SSA Disability Redesign: Focus
Needed on Initiatives Most Crucial to Reducing Costs and Time, GAO/
HEHS-97-20 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 20, 1996); SSA Disability Redesign:
Actions Needed to Enhance Future Progress, GAO/HEHS-99-25 (Washington,
D.C.: Mar. 12, 1999); and Social Security Disability: Disappointing
Results From SSA‘s Efforts to Improve the Disability Claims Process
Warrant Immediate Attention, GAO-02-322 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 27,
2002).
[13] GAO-02-322.
[14] GAO-02-322.
[15] U.S. General Accounting Office, Social Security Administration:
Agency Must Position Itself Now to Meet Profound Challenges, GAO-02-
289T (Washington, D.C.: May 2, 2002).
[16] The Social Security Independence and Program Improvements Act of
1994 (P.L. 103-296) created a seven member bipartisan Advisory Board to
advise the President, the Congress, and the Commissioner of Social
Security on matters relating to the Social Security and SSI programs.
[17] U.S. General Accounting Office, Social Security: Sustained Effort
Needed to Improve Management and Prepare for the Future, GAO/HRD-94-22
(Washington, D.C.: Oct. 27, 1993).
[18] GAO/HRD-94-22. Also, see GAO/T-HEHS-98-113 and GAO/HEHS-96-196.
[19] This document was originally called ’2010 Vision,“ but was
subsequently renamed ’SSA‘s Service Vision.“
[20] U.S. General Accounting Office, Information Technology Management:
Social Security Administration Practices Can Be Improved, GAO-01-961
(Washington, D.C.: Aug. 21, 2001).
[21] U.S. General Accounting Office, Information Technology: Enterprise
Architecture Use Across the Federal Government Can Be Improved, GAO-02-
6 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 19, 2002).
[22] U.S. General Accounting Office, Social Security Administration:
Update on Year 2000 and Other Key Information Technology Initiatives,
GAO/T-AIMD-99-259 (Washington, D.C.: July 29, 1999).
[23] Since 1982, SSA has provided SSNs only to U.S. citizens,
noncitizens authorized to work in the United States, and noncitizens
with an approved nonwork reason for needing a number.
[24] U.S. General Accounting Office, Social Security Numbers:
Government Benefits from SSN Use but Could Provide Better Safeguards,
GAO-02-352 (Washington, D.C.: May 31, 2002).
GAO‘s Mission:
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress,
exists to support Congress in meeting its constitutional
responsibilities and to help improve the performance and accountability
of the federal government for the American people. GAO examines the use
of public funds; evaluates federal programs and policies; and provides
analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help Congress make
informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions. GAO‘s commitment to
good government is reflected in its core values of accountability,
integrity, and reliability.
Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony:
The fastest and easiest way to obtain copies of GAO documents at no
cost is through the Internet. GAO‘s Web site ( www.gao.gov ) contains
abstracts and full-text files of current reports and testimony and an
expanding archive of older products. The Web site features a search
engine to help you locate documents using key words and phrases. You
can print these documents in their entirety, including charts and other
graphics.
Each day, GAO issues a list of newly released reports, testimony, and
correspondence. GAO posts this list, known as ’Today‘s Reports,“ on its
Web site daily. The list contains links to the full-text document
files. To have GAO e-mail this list to you every afternoon, go to
www.gao.gov and select ’Subscribe to daily E-mail alert for newly
released products“ under the GAO Reports heading.
Order by Mail or Phone:
The first copy of each printed report is free. Additional copies are $2
each. A check or money order should be made out to the Superintendent
of Documents. GAO also accepts VISA and Mastercard. Orders for 100 or
more copies mailed to a single address are discounted 25 percent.
Orders should be sent to:
U.S. General Accounting Office
441 G Street NW,
Room LM Washington,
D.C. 20548:
To order by Phone:
Voice: (202) 512-6000:
TDD: (202) 512-2537:
Fax: (202) 512-6061:
To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs:
Contact:
Web site: www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm E-mail: fraudnet@gao.gov
Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202) 512-7470:
Public Affairs:
Jeff Nelligan, managing director, NelliganJ@gao.gov (202) 512-4800 U.S.
General Accounting Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 7149 Washington, D.C.
20548:
