The Online Newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, Inc.

Sneak peek at what's in this issue:

On May 7, 2003, I testified before the House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education and asked the Subcommittee to “Approve the President’s budget request for SSA’s FY 2004 administrative expenses. Funding of SSA’s administrative budget at the level requested by the President is absolutely essential to ensure SSA’s ability to render quality service to the American public.”

Also, in June, 2003 when the NCSSMA Executive Committee met in Washington D.C. we visited a couple of dozen members and/or staffers on the Hill to lobby for resources for SSA and specifically for approval of the President’s FY 2004 budget request.

As an aside, I think it’s important to mention that when we testify and/or lobby, we are on leave and on our “own dime.”

Having set the record straight on where we stand regarding the President’s budget, I believe it is also important to note that NCSSMA is and has been on record for some three years now that we need 5000 additional FTE’s in our field offices. This figure is based upon the feedback that we received from our members based on the three surveys of management conducted over the last three years.

We are not so naive to think that those 5000 FTE’s are going to materialize magically. We fully understand the political and organizational impediments. But it is important for the NCSSMA, as the “unfiltered voice of field management”, to keep that figure before both Agency and congressional leadership. Every day, in our field offices throughout the country, we experience the tangible, negative impact that the significant understaffing of our management and rank and file positions has on the level of service we are able to provide. And while the figure 5000 may seem high, when you divide it by our 1350 field offices and come up with 3 to 4 FTE’s per office you realize how little it really is.

Now let me mention a related topic and that is quality. Regarding this issue, our message is clear and simple. We fully subscribe to the Commissioner’s quality initiative. We believe wholeheartedly that “Quality Matters.” But we believe just as strongly that Quality Costs. If you want quality, you must be willing and able to pay for it.

The collective judgment of our membership, as reflected by their responses to our surveys of management over the past three years, is that if we want to improve quality the single most important thing we can do is invest in more staff and more management in our field offices and teleservice centers. By making this investment we will be able to move back toward the management reviews, desk audits, interview audits, training and mentoring that have gone by the boards over the past decade due to the discredited delayering initiative. Anyone who knows anything about what is going on in our field offices and teleservice centers today knows that we are as right as right can be about the need for more staff and more management. That should be the starting point for enhancing quality.

Arguably, our approach to quality in SSA puts the cart before the horse. We are over invested in measuring quality and under invested in assuring it. End of line reviews should be the final step of a comprehensive quality program rather than its only step. The argument can be made that our entire approach to quality is that we measure it end of line. Instead of adding to the growing cadre of checkers, who are far removed from direct service, we should design a comprehensive in-line quality assurance program. But designing the program is only the first step. We need to make sure that there are resources (i.e. more staff and more supervisors) sufficient to administer it properly. Such a program should result in more error free quality products. A concomitant of this should be that the resources allocated to expensive end of line reviews can be decreased. Keep in mind that the end of line reviewers in OQA literally have hours to make decisions and research policy and procedures while frontline employees with claimants at their desks or on their phones must often do the same in minutes. It is more cost efficient and better service to assure the accuracy of front line decisions than to find errors that must be sent back for correction after the fact.

When field management sees that the Agency is investing in achieving quality up front by investing in staff and management, we will truly believe that “Quality Matters”.

Editor’s Corner
By Phil Walton
     FrontLine Editor

Let me relate one very mundane example. My 17-year-old daughter Allison is entering her senior year in high school this fall. She recently attended a weeklong seminar for Top Engineering Prospects at a major, nationally known, university here in the Midwest. My motivation in enrolling her in this program was to help her distinguish between academic disciplines. She has a very wide range of interests but we were confused by the distinction between a chemist and a chemical engineer, an architect and a structural engineer, etc. I felt the several hundred dollars investment was well worthwhile if it could help Allison make these distinctions. This “investment” was intended to decrease the possibility that she might change majors once in college and turn 4 years of tuition into five or more. I thought several hundred dollars was money well spent to forestall a change of majors later that could well cost several thousand dollars or more. It was a CBA (cost-benefit analysis) decision, plain and simple.

We drove to the university on a hot, muggy Sunday afternoon. We arrived early so were first to register. At the registration table, the staff gave my daughter a folder containing her meal ticket, daily schedule, and other orientation materials. Being a doting dad who likes to know where his daughter is at any given time, I asked for an extra copy of the schedule. I explained I would be touching base with her by phone and wanted to know her schedule so I would know when she was available. The registration staff hurriedly searched through their materials, then advised they had no extra copies of the schedules. But they seemed impressed by the fact that it would be a good idea to have extras and promised to make a note for next year’s seminar. It sounded like they wanted me to come back next year. Instead, I handed them the schedule and asked that they make me a photocopy. They told me to go to the residence hall desk right behind me for a copy. I dutifully took the schedule to the residence hall desk and asked for a copy. The young man at the counter produced the copy and then asked for a dime. I thought he was kidding of course. But he stuck to his procedure – copies cost a dime. I tried to explain to the young man that this was something the university should have supplied in the first place. He was pleasant enough but was certain of little else other than copies cost a dime. The residence hall director happened to overhear the exchange and interjected. She opined that residence hall policy was the purview of the Office of Student Affairs, whereas the program schedule involved was under the College of Engineering. What I was hearing was this dime was a matter of interdepartmental coordination. I had to pause for 30 seconds and practice deep breathing exercises. My sense of organization disconnect was immense. I could visualize the check I wrote for this program which fell somewhere between a car and house payment and thought – they want another dime? In the end, I politely gave her a quarter and asked that she apply the extra 15 cents to the endowment.

Then as I passed the registration desk, I mentioned to the registration desk the dime
charge. The person in charge of registration said, “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that. We’re Engineering. They’re Student Affairs.” “But you are one university, right?” I asked. “Yes, but lines and policies are complicated. It’s only a dime, after all.” I thought, you’re right. I’m just a cheap putz. I should apologize profusely for questioning this and not understanding the way organizations work. Perhaps it was the five-hour drive to get Allison here that had me a bit testy. Then Allison, as she is wont to do, brought me back to reality. “Rinky-dink”, she offered.

You see, Allison and I have visited a number of universities over the past year and know how schools try to treat prospective students. Not thinking ahead about customer needs, however mundane, is not part of how it’s supposed to be done. Everyone, however, slips up now and then. We forget, don’t anticipate, needs. When this happens, front-line staff has to feel absolutely, unequivocally free to exercise common-sense judgment to fill a need. No inter-departmental meetings should be needed. No call to the president’s home on a Sunday afternoon should be called for.

Why the engineering staff could not frame a simple, efficient solution to a very mundane problem is the heart of the matter. Did they not care? (possible) Couldn’t they craft a solution like making copies back at their offices or negotiating with the residence hall director? These people are engineers after all, the remedy was painfully clear.

All this may seem like minutiae. But it’s most often a very small irritant that speaks volumes about an organization. If you can’t tend to minute issues, what’s that say about your ability with bigger issues? If you think this is minutiae you would have to see the line of parents with dimes in their hand to appreciate otherwise.

Organizational mission statements are absolute fluff if front-liners don’t know how to fill a need extemporaneously without reference to the organizational chart.

Moral: Tuck this story away in the back of your mind and call it back up the next time you hear an SSA front-liner tell a customer the issue lies with a Program Service Center, OHA, or some other branch of the organizational tree. Customers don’t want or deserve to be put off. Front liners have to know they can and should be responsive. There’s always something that can be done to move a customer need toward fulfillment, even if only an inch.

But if we revel in excuses based on organizational lines instead of deriving satisfaction from the exercise of judgment and discretion, we’re digging a hole in customer service we’ll not readily climb out of.

It’s a cultural thing, don’t you know? Now the truly bad news – workplace culture is 90% local. You got it. When it comes to responsibility, we can yell up the ladder all we want if it makes us feel better, but we’d be better served by looking in a mirror.

Copyright (All Rights Reserved)
P.M.Walton 2003

Phil Walton, FrontLine Editor
Four SeaGate, Suite 1000
Toledo, OH 43604

Phone: 419-259-7300
Fax:      419-259-2056
Email:  frontline@ncssma.org
(If mailing from within the agency please copy and paste this address into Outlook)