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FrontLine |
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The Electronic Newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations |
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| July 2001 - Issue 4 | |||||||||||||||
| "One
of the ironies of management generally is that the payoff from good
management is, in part, invisible. With good management, mistakes are
avoided. Good management is manifested in quiet competence, in the
anticipation and preemption of crisis. It is impossible to place a value
on a crisis that didn’t occur or a problem avoided." James R. Thompson Fred Thompson "Memos to the President" Sneak peek at what's in this Issue:
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President’s
Message By Steve Korn NCSSMA President With the technology of our service delivery increasing at a dramatic pace, some see a conflict with community-based service. But this chasm is not even an issue if the technology is managed in such a way to multiply service options while integrating one with the other. In other words, increasing technology should complement existing service options, not supplant them. NCSSMA is an avid supporter of policies and technology that allow customers to be directly served by SSA’s network of 1300 field offices regardless of the interface the customer chooses. Whether it’s face-to-face, 800# or via the Internet, field facilities will always have a viable role. In fact, SSA’s Service Vision states that customer contacts will be channeled transparently to wherever in the SSA network that service capacity exists. Why is this important to NCSSMA’s members and the public we serve? First, it will give SSA the flexibility to deal with unpredictable levels of competing demand. Second, it will allow SSA to maintain a strong and viable network of field offices in communities throughout America regardless of increasing demand for 800# and Internet services. And this in turn will allow SSA to continue to serve those that either need or prefer to be served by their local field offices. Over the years, staffing levels in SSA’s field offices have declined to the point where the ability of many offices to effectively and efficiently deliver services to their communities is compromised. For example, almost 200 offices currently have 10 or fewer employees. One of the reasons for this precipitous decline was SSA’s decision to create centralized service delivery organizations that handle a significant portion of the work that used to be processed in local field offices. Many of these decisions were made as a result of technological limitations that, for example, did not allow 800# calls to be cost effectively routed to field offices. Fortunately SSA’s teleservice centers generally do an outstanding job handling the calls they answer. However, field offices are unable to help with overflow demand as they are not integrated into the 800# network. Technology now exists that would allow field offices to be integrated quickly and completely into all of SSA’s service delivery modes. Someone calling SSA’s 800# or contacting SSA via the Internet should be able to reach an employee in a field office as easily as an employee in a centralized site. This would allow SSA the flexibility it now lacks to deal with changing and relatively unpredictable levels of demand for face-to-face versus telephone versus Internet service. It would also allow SSA to maintain adequate staffing levels in all of its 1300 community based offices without adversely affecting 800# service. SSA needs to take action now to ensure this technology is in place as soon as possible. |
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Commissioner
Nominee
The nomination of Jo Anne Barnhart as Social Security Commissioner is good news for field and teleservice center management. Of particular cause for optimism is Ms. Barnhart’s membership on the SSA Advisory Board since 1997. The Social Security Advisory Board has been extremely active in focusing attention on service delivery issues within SSA. Their 1999 report, "How the Social Security Administration Can Improve Its Service to the Public" was described by one veteran field office manager as the most honest and encouraging report he’s seen in his 35 plus years of service. The report documented service delivery problems caused by the downsizing of field offices and the reduction in managers and supervisors in field offices and TSC’s at the same time workloads and pressure to meet performance goals were increasing. It criticized the lack of time devoted to providing employee training and quality reviews. And perhaps most importantly, it discussed the need to improve communication between employees on the front-line and those in upper management so significant problems that affect delivery of services are not ignored. One of our frustrations was the inability to see the Board’s recommendations implemented or in many cases even given serious consideration. Now a person who helped write and endorsed these recommendations will be in a position to bring them to fruition. |
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Editor’s
Corner Carolyn Shearin-Jones recently left SSA for other pursuits. For the past several years Carolyn was the Director of the Office of Strategic Management. We did not want to miss the opportunity to express our best wishes for her future and thank her for her candor and common sense approach. The NCSSMA could always rely on Carolyn for straight talk. We wish her the best. |
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Recommended
Reading
There is some interesting reading on the topic of government management available in the "Memos to the President", sponsored by the Pricewaterhouse Coopers Endowment for The Business of Government. There are two collections of memos. The first is written by leading public administrators, the other by top chief executive officers. The quotation that appears on page one is from one of the most interesting memos in the public administrator edition. The title of that piece is "Federal Management in the Post-Reinvention Era: Lessons from the National Performance Review", by James R. Thompson and Fred Thompson. The full collection can be found at http://www.endowment.pwcglobal.com/memos_index.asp. |
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De-layering
Revisited
De-layering has been a buzzword bandied about for several years now. Whether de-layering down or re-layering up, from the perspective of the frontline SSA has been a study in confusion. Before we go on with any further de-layering or flattening or whatever it may be called in the future, we’d like to call a time out for a moment and see if our perspectives can be translated and incorporated into some ground rules. First, there is the matter of just what is a layer. It is our opinion that if you can see or hear a customer from your workstation, you are not a layer. Supervisors and managers in field offices and teleservice centers are not layers. They enable and facilitate frontline service. They are standing at the frontlines with the staff. The irony is that over the last several years in SSA the lion’s share of management cuts has been in the frontline facilities. Meanwhile, the layers immediately above the frontline, area/state director offices and regional commissioner offices, have added more support staff. So after several years, organizationally we have a de-layered frontline and re-layered layers. Confused yet? Hold on---there’s more. Last fall then Commissioner Apfel spoke to the NCSSMA annual meeting in Seattle. He spoke of the large, urban field offices across the U.S. and how de-layering had hit these facilities hardest and he would be directing a remedy of that situation in short order. It’s no secret that many larger metropolitan offices have had their support team trimmed mightily over the last several years. The explanation for this has been repeated so many times that it’s nearly axiomatic. When you are trying to meet a numeric ratio applicable to all, larger offices have to bite the bullet more to compensate for the smallest of facilities. It’s simple math. After what seemed like a perfectly clear statement from the commissioner, some strange things occurred. To start with, some of the first vacancy announcements to hit the wires were for Deputy Assistant Regional Commissioners, regional office positions that had been redlined years ago. The relevance of refilling these positions to the commissioner’s large, urban field office directive was lost on most of us. Then, in some parts of the country they found it necessary to translate what the commissioner meant. They set about to define what "large" and "urban" meant and ended up with very unusual results. Offices in towns of 15,000 and 35,000 were found to be both large and urban while an office located in the downtown of a city with a population of 480,000 was found to be neither. We believe terms such as large and urban are unambiguous. A ground rule for the reasonable person test should be in place. That test can also be expressed as the "if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc" protocol. But as confusing as the re-definition action was, it was at least something. In some parts of the country, no action whatsoever was taken to remedy the management ratio issues in large, urban offices. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Meanwhile, we notice recently that new positions in the layers are being created. Words like "coordinator" or "project manager" are appearing in these new position titles. All this leads us to conclude that while the frontline continues on a low fat diet, the layers above continue to bulk up. It’s time someone slammed on the brakes and looked at the entire matter objectively. Supervisory and staff support FTE’s need to be returned to where the ultimate mission of the agency --- direct public service ---- is fulfilled. |
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Phil Walton, FrontLine
Editor |
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