The Social Security Administration does a difficult job well, and has had a number of information technology successes. At the same time, long-range strategic planning for large-scale technology modernization, which can be a challenge for any large enterprise, presents a unique challenge for SSA - which handles over 32,000 new benefit applications, and serves 180,000 Americans in person and well over 300,000 Americans by phone, each and every business day.
I hope this hearing will focus on how SSA can best move forward, and what we can do to support that.
For 77 years and through 13 recessions, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has paid Americans their earned benefits on time and in full. In 2011, they paid Social Security benefits to over 55 million Americans with an error rate of less than 1 percent. SSA maintains earnings records for nearly 160 million current workers and handles more than 8 million new benefit applications every year. Last year, Social Security field offices served about 45 million visitors in person, and 76 million people called SSA’s 800 number for help.
SSA helped all those Americans while maintaining a customer satisfaction rating of about 80 percent. One of our witnesses today, Mr. Freed, will report that three of SSA’s most popular online tools outperform Amazon, the highest-scoring e-retail website they’ve ever rated.
That’s why I could not support the House Republican budget that forced cuts to SSA’s budget in 2011, or the decision to underfund it again in 2012. We can’t expect Social Security to keep helping so many people with so few payment mistakes if they keep losing thousands of experienced employees every year and can’t replace them.
One in four American families receives income from Social Security. That day-to-day mission of providing Americans with their earned benefits is so vital that SSA doesn’t have the option of shutting down -- even for a day or two -- while they install new systems or retrain the nearly 80,000 workers who help deliver Social Security every day.
For those who think Social Security could shut down for a day, what are you going to tell
The 32,000 Americans who planned to apply for Social Security benefits;
The 72,000 Americans who had to request Social Security numbers;
The 80,000 Americans who would have gone to a Social Security office for help;
Or the more than 300,000 people who would call Social Security’s 800 number or a local Social Security office?
SSA has other challenges, too. Even though Americans will pay over $730 billion into Social Security in 2012 alone, SSA has to come to Congress every year to ask for money to operate Social Security. It’s hard to fund long-term investments in technology or anything else when you don’t know what next year’s budget will be, especially when your last couple of budgets didn’t even cover your day-to-day costs.
SSA’s current systems are a complex patchwork quilt of old and new technologies - 700 different software applications that generate over 160 million computer transactions a day.
E-government offers great promise for modern customer service and greater efficiency, but SSA serves a diverse population and not everyone has the technology and the skills needed for “self-serve" government right now. For example, 70 percent of adults in urban areas have high-speed Internet access at home, but only 50 percent of those in rural areas do.
There is longstanding concern about SSA’s record of strategic planning and investment for IT modernization. The Government Accountability Office will tell us this afternoon that SSA’s methods for measuring progress and cost-effectiveness of IT investments are inadequate.
Finally, I want to better understand SSA’s recent change which merged a separate Office of the Chief Information Officer - the CIO -- with the Office of Systems. Typically, CIO offices focus on long-term strategic planning and investment, while the systems office has the challenging job of making sure those 700 software applications and hardware in thousands of different offices keep functioning every day. Deputy Commissioner Kelly Croft, who now wears both of those hats - Chief Information Officer and head of systems - is here today to talk about how he juggles those two critical responsibilities.
When Social Security began in the 1930s, a French industrial expert hired to advise the U.S. government concluded that the record-keeping and data management needed for the new Social Security program was impossible - just the weight of the original paper records, for example, would be so massive that no building in Washington had ever been built with floors sturdy enough to hold them. But Social Security persevered, and in 1937, IBM invented the 077 Collator, a punch-card tabulating system that is the ancestor of modern computers, just for Social Security.
More recently, in 1993, SSA started using predictive modeling software to increase the efficiency of their program integrity work - the methods they use to prevent fraud and payment errors.
Reviewing cases targeted by this computer model more than triples the savings from this work.
In 2006, SSA completed its move to full electronic disability files, completely eliminating new paper files.
This change sped up processing at all levels, allowed work to be done more efficiently, reduced the risk that files will be lost or damaged, and saved an estimated $1.3 billion. Just to help you visualize how much money that is, if we invested all that in food safety, for example, we could triple the number of food inspectors at the FDA.
In 2007, SSA began using predictive modeling to identify disability cases which could be decided very quickly.
While most disabled Americans wait over 100 days to find out if they meet Social Security’s strict test and are eligible for benefits, predictive modeling software has allowed SSA to decide a small subset of cases in an average of 10 days while continuing to reduce overall waiting times for all disability applicants.
SSA has been making steady progress in offering more services online, offering convenience for consumers and time savings for staff.
Just last week, SSA rolled out long-awaited online access to the Social Security statement for 160 million Americans, allowing workers to check their earnings records and see what their future benefit levels will be online.
Although the online statement cannot replace the mailed statement, it is an important and welcome supplement, and SSA overcame significant hurdles to make the access user-friendly while still keeping personal information secure.
We need to understand both Social Security’s history and how the agency is moving forward. Social Security’s mission is as vital to all Americans as ever, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how SSA can best harness technology for the future without disrupting what is an indispensable service for millions of Americans who need Social Security to keep being there every single day.
