Why Social Security’s new ‘phone sharing’ system may slow help : NPR

A building from the Social Security Administration office is seen on March 6 in Nashville, Tenn.

George Walker IV / AP

hide

tilting legend

George Walker IV / AP

Telephone calls at local social security offices are currently resettled in other field offices – often to the staff who do not have competence on the appellant’s case, according to employees.

Disability defenders and experts warn that it makes people more difficult for people to get help.

The last change is part of the continuous efforts of the Social Security Administration to suppress waiting times for telephone services.

In a statement in NPR, a spokesperson for the agency said that “the objective of the telephone sharing system is to improve customer service by reducing waiting times and meeting customer needs at the first point of contact.

“As part of the newly implemented system, calls to local offices can be sent to staff available in other field offices, regardless of the geographic location, to help manage high call volumes.”

But Angela Digeronimo, specialist in claims in Woodbridge, NJ, and president of a union representing employees of 25 state offices, told NPR that the new system creates a situation “hit or lack” for people who call their local office.

Digeronimo said that the intention of this change “may have been not to have the appellants’ waiting”, which is a good thing. But in practice, she said, it delays a sorted problem if a caller is redirected to a local office that cannot really solve his problem.

“If it is someone else’s office, the jurisdiction is that of someone else,” she said. “You cannot act on this because your office does not have the opportunity to erase this assertion. You must refer it to the service office, which the public member thought he was doing. So, he becomes a little heavy.”

An agency spokesperson refuted the assertion that appellants are sent to offices that cannot help.

“All SSA field offices are equipped to manage requests for information and solve problems for the appellants, regardless of the appellant or where their case is from,” the spokesman said in a statement. “SSA staff across the country have access to the systems and information necessary to help a wide range of social security issues.”

But Amber Westbrook, president of the local union section and employee of the field office in the Chicago region, said it was simply not and the system.

“Our system is very specific to the office in which we can do things,” she said. “So, to me, physically, if another statement is open in another office, I cannot clarify their case. This is just the way they keep this to make sure that things are correct and complete.”

Westbrook said workers from other field offices could be able to see what’s going on with someone’s case, but if they are in bad jurisdiction, they cannot “actually take care of the question”.

Jen Burdick, a lawyer supervising from Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, said that the new phone sharing system created a situation where he took his group “more time to help people” get and maintain social security invalidity services.

“I have the impression that there may have been good intentions here, but it is ineffective and it will waste more time of people, at least when I am reassigned to another office,” she said.

Burdick said that she was more concerned about people who have no representative to help them.

“How does that have an impact on them? Does that make them think that they cannot call SSA in the future?” She asked. “I fear that it can be confident in the system.”

For employees, Westbrook said that it was also very little communicated over the duration of this program.

“They didn’t really give us many ideas for the duration of the duration,” she said. “Things [are] Change so quickly within the agency… Something can be different tomorrow to that of time today. It was a whirlwind for people. “”

Nancy Altman – President of Social Security Works, a group that defends the expansion of Social Security – said that in previous administrations, those responsible would have obtained comments from all levels before implementing a new system.

“So everyone understands when it happens, how it will happen, which they will do with an overflow and so on,” she said. “Then you announce it to employees and it is only then that you move it to the public.”

Altman said that sharing phones is also another example of the agency deploying a new policy without heading to the public and stakeholders, which obliges defenders and beneficiaries to rush.

“It is difficult for those of us from outside to follow,” she said. “It is difficult for the media to follow. But besides, it is difficult for the American people and the employees to follow them.”