Federal Manager's Daily Report

Workload issues, heightened by growing percentages of employees becoming eligible to retire, and various IT-related problems remain among the major management challenges at the SSA, according to the annual assessment by the IG there.

“SSA’s workloads have grown with the aging of the baby boomer population. In FY 2017, the Agency served over 42 million visitors in over 1,200 field offices nationwide, a 5 percent increase from over 40 million visitors in FY 2015,” it said. SSA further expects the number of beneficiaries to increase by 43 percent over the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, 15 percent of its employees already are eligible for retirement; among senior executives that figure is more than 50 percent and among frontline supervisors it is above 30 percent. “Without leadership development and succession planning, the loss of supervisors because of retirement will result in a lack of both experience and institutional knowledge,” it said.

It recommended that the agency continue enhancing its online services to reduce the number of field office visits and other one-on-one services and leave more time for employees to help those who need to complete their business in those ways.

Other challenges include modernizing the IT infrastructure, securing systems and data in them, reducing the disability application backlog, reducing improper payments, strengthening protection of the Social Security number, and strengthening anti-fraud activities.