In fiscal 2008, the Social Security Administration’s approximately 1,300 field offices provided service to about 44 million customers, but through the past few years staffing reductions have challenged their ability to manage work while continuing to deliver quality customer service, GAO has said.
It said increases in retirement and disability filings by about 1 million by 2017 and a significant retirement wave of about 44 percent during that period of SSA’s most experienced staff pose difficult challenges.
After interviewing SSA headquarters and field officials and analyzing data on SSA’s workloads and customer service, GAO concluded that staffing constraints are already having adverse effects on field office services.
Despite a drop in field office staff of 4.4 percent from 2005 to 2008, greater efficiencies kept productivity losses to just 1.3 percent, but side effects have emerged.
For example, in order to manage the reduced staffing, SSA deferred work deemed as a lower priority, such as conducting reviews of beneficiaries’ continuing eligibility, and as a result beneficiaries who no longer qualify for benefits may still receive payments erroneously.
Further, in fiscal 2007, more than 3 million customers waited for over an hour to be served, and an internal field office caller survey found that over half of customers calling selected field offices had at least one earlier call that had gone unanswered.
GAO cited the above as contributing factors to a 3 percent drop in customer satisfaction from 84 percent in fiscal 2005 to 81 percent in fiscal 2008.
