Backlogs at Social Security processing centers are one the rise, with the backlog growing by more than a million and a half cases. The Office of Inspector General says the number of pending cases has risen because of staffing and overtime funding shortfalls. Deputy Assistant  IG Mark Searight joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more details.

Interview transcript:

Mark Searight
Most of the cases here are something that started at the field office or teleservice center, where a beneficiary called in is either asking for a benefit, or where SSA has actually identified that someone’s receiving too much of a benefit, but it has to go back and be finalized and reviewed. These are very complex cases that require special attention.

Tom Temin 
So these are things that can’t be solved online or by the normal automated processes that Social Security has in place?

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Mark Searight 
Correct. And they also can’t be processed at the field office or at the teleservice center, so they go to the processing centers that have specialized personnel.

Tom Temin 
How many of these processing centers does Social Security operate?

Mark Searight 
Social Security operates eight of the processing centers. Two though, are specialized, so roughly, there are six that will take these type of cases on.

Tom Temin 
Is most of the work by paper, or is the information mostly online? I mean, are they handling paper at these centers?

Mark Searight 
They’re not really handling paper, from our understanding. Most of it is still in a computer. But they do have to get, sometimes, a form from someone or validate information.

Tom Temin
Run through the numbers for us, you’ve looked at the pending cases over a period of six years ending last year. What did you find in terms of quantities?

Mark Searight 
So we did identify that four of those six years, SSA was able to actually meet their performance measure. However, that led to, as you mentioned, the one-point-four million increase in pending transactions at the processing centers across that time period. We reviewed 139 cases and found that 43% of those cases had been pending for 500 days or longer.

Tom Temin 
And you said to that, it went up by one-point-four million. What’s the total of pending cases they’ve got now?

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Mark Searight 
At the end of our audit, it was roughly around four-point-three million in 2023.

Tom Temin
What is their annual goal to have zero, or just to keep the backlog from growing?

Mark Searight 
Their goal, the way they explained to us, their goal was to determine how many receipts were going to be coming in in a year, and then, based on the staffing and the overtime that they were able to fund, how many cases could they actually complete? So it’s not technically a goal to limit or reduce it. It’s more of a goal just to say how much work are we going to be able to do this year, and then what would be the outcome?

Tom Temin 
The other question was the number of backlogged cases seemed to fluctuate and reached a peak, it looked pandemic related. I guess we can relate a lot of things to 2020, but it seems like that was one of their worst years.

Mark Searight 
We didn’t dig into that as to whether it was pandemic related. We did notice that in 2022 they did have a large drop off in staffing. They lost almost 400 staff members at their processing centers. Obviously, not having staff and then also being limited in how much overtime they can give those staff leads to their inability to process as many receipts.

Tom Temin 
We’re speaking with Mark Searight. He is the Deputy Assistant IG for audits at the Social Security Administration. So they’re aware of this. I mean, they probably agree with you this is not a good trend.

Mark Searight 
Yes, they did. They did agree with our findings and our recommendations. You know, our recommendations were focusing very much on developing a workload and staffing plan to help them reduce the pending transactions, and then also to establish, goals for each of the types of transactions for a time period to make sure that they don’t pen for too long. Their feedback to us, though, was, although they agree, they do need more funding, and they need steady funding so that they can hire they can train the employees, and then they can make information technology improvements at the processing centers.

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Tom Temin 
And you also found, too that not only were the cases backlogged, but there were erroneous occurrences that increased their level of improper payments.

Mark Searight 
So it wasn’t that there was erroneous-based on the pending, the issue that we found was it was just being delayed. So for example, one of our examples in the report is about an overpayment where a beneficiary, SSA, on their own, determined that a beneficiary who was receiving disability payments had received over four months, $9,000 in overpayment. However, it took SSA over two years to finalize their review of that transaction. At which case that overpayment then ballooned to $62,000. So although, they identified it initially because of the pending backlog, it really ballooned and made that overpayment extremely a lot for that beneficiary.

Tom Temin 
And you mentioned that you examined 130 cases. Do you feel that’s a number that is projectable across the 4.6 or 4.4 million cases that are pending, and therefore, do you have some sense of what their improper payments might be stemming from this big number of pending cases?

Mark Searight 
We reviewed 139. We worked with our statistician, and they provided us that number, they said that would be projectable, or allow us to project across the population.

Tom Temin 
What could the total improper payments be as a result of not getting these things resolved in a timely way?

Mark Searight 
Again, that’s the $1.1 billion that we felt that, you know, by the time that they finished processing those pending transactions, the improper payments had ballooned up to the $1.1 billion.

Tom Temin 
And did you look at all into why the 400 people suddenly vanished? Why were they fleeing the agency?

Mark Searight 
No, we did not get into the staffing issues on this audit.

Tom Temin 
But staffing issues seems to be something that is kind of dogging them for some time now.

Mark Searight 
According to SSA, yes, they’ve been having staffing issues.

Tom Temin 
And did they indicate, or did you indicate the agency is on a customer experience drive, and you know, Commissioner O’Malley has meetings to look at statistics and trying to have a metrics-driven organization, I think, a practice he’s well known for. And did you assess this in terms of customer experience with such a high percentage of cases pending for hundreds of days or even more than a year? In some cases.

Mark Searight 
We did not get into that. The majority of our work was done before Commissioner O’Malley actually arrived and had set up his security stat process.

Tom Temin
But I imagine this must play into this. I mean, in the reaction and the ongoing response to the report, let’s say is stemming from the new administration. Fair to say?

Mark Searight 
I would say that is, but I would rather let SSA speak specifically for what they’re focusing on.

Tom Temin 
Well, not to put words in yours or his mouth. So what happens next? I mean, the report is out there, you get the sense that they want to get on it and try to staff up and knock down that number.

Mark Searight 
Yes, our experience in talking with you know, the Deputy Commissioners over there, this is high on their radar, and they definitely are focusing on, how can they reduce that pending backlog, or at least keep it where it doesn’t keep growing.

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