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     The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has posted an interview it did with Andrew Saul. Here are some excerpts with emphasis added: ... On one of my first field trips, I happened to notice on the door that we closed at 12 o'clock on Wednesdays. I frankly couldn't believe it , because we were losing basically 10 percent of our available time to service our customers by being closed on Wednesday afternoons. ... The 800 number, that has been a major problem, major concern for all our customers. If you called in, you would find you had an unacceptable waiting time � sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 40 minutes. So, what we've done is we've immediately hired about 1,100 new operators . Our call time right now is down by about 50 percent. We've got farther to go, but I think if you watch over the next six months, we will get the call centers down to the proper waiting time, which will be close to zero. That's a prediction that I'm willi...

     From Government Executive : The Social Security Administration on Monday informed employees of its various subcomponents that it will move forward with new cuts to telework policies, a move quickly decried by union officials who said they were left out of the notification process. ... Rich Couture, who serves both as a spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees� general committee representing Social Security employees and president of AFGE Council 215, which represents workers at the agency�s hearings and appeals offices, said management similarly rejected his own efforts to learn about the changes, and that he spent much of his afternoon in meetings and working with fellow union representatives to cobble together a list of the reforms across the agency. �I�ve got to tell you, the depth of disrespect and disregard for AFGE with the rollout of this announcement, where the press found out before the union and th...

     Below are two graphics that the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) , a labor union which represents most Social Security employees, sent to its members recently. Apparently, the milk carton graphic was sent 25 days after the "Where is Saul" graphic.      I can guess that Social Security has some online system that employees use to sign in and out and that any agency employees can check to see if any other agency employee is on duty. If that's the case, I don't know why Saul wouldn't use it. It seems quite unlikely that he was away from his office for more than two months. I hope that's not the case.

     Andrew Saul, Commissioner of Social Security will make his first appearance before a Congressional committee as Commissioner on January 29 at 9:30. It will be before the Senate Special Committee on Aging and the hearing will concern "Social Security Impersonation Scam."       Will the House Social Security Subcommittee schedule even one oversight hearing in this Congress?

     From an op ed in the Baltimore Sun by Ralph de Juliis, head of the union local that represents most Social Security employees: ... While the president has blustered and obfuscated through his first term, Trump-appointed Cabinet officials have waged a war on the federal workforce that has undermined our productivity, driven down morale and villainized the very employees who show up every day to serve the American people. ...   Now under threat is the Social Security Administration thanks to administration decisions that will ultimately harm employees and drive up wait times for Social Security recipients under the guise of good public relations. Social Security Administrator Commissioner Andrew Saul announced that the agency would extend office hours to the public on Wednesday afternoons in more than 1,100 field offices around the country. He followed this announcement with a promise to hire 1,100 new employees, claiming that the new hires woul...

      An e-mail message to staff from Andrew Saul, Commissioner of Social Security: Subject: Budget Update      I am happy to report that the President signed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, which funds our work through  September 2020. Knowing our budget for fiscal year 2020 allows us to better plan hiring and make other funding decisions. Our approved budget is about the same amount as last year. This legislation also contained an average 3.1 percent pay raise for Federal employees, effective in January 2020.      As I have said, our fundamental goal is to ensure timely and accurate service for the public. We will focus our funding on improving  service and reducing wait times. We will build on our progress in reducing the disability hearings backlog and modernizing our  information technology. We must also continue to protect the integrity of our programs by processing our medical co...

     A long time Social Security employee speaks ou t about the problems caused by Commissioner Saul's decision to open the agency's field offices on Wednesday afternoons. I hope she won't be punished. She's only speaking the truth.

     I'm hearing that Social Security Commissioner Saul is considering opening his agency's field offices to the public on Saturdays. Nothing is definite yet. This comes on the heels of a recent decision to keep the field offices open Wednesday afternoons.      I represent claimants before the Social Security Administration. I am extremely concerned about the level of service the agency delivers. If I thought this would help, I'd applaud it. However, I know it's going to have the opposite effect. Field office staff was already stretched almost to the breaking point before the decision to keep the offices open Wednesday afternoons. There is now no time for field office staff to deal with complicated time-consuming tasks because they're on a treadmill dealing with customers who want to be seen. You make the problem worse if you open the field offices on Saturdays. Opening the offices on Saturdays would be great for service if the agency had plenty o...

From: ^Commissioner Broadcast < Commissioner.Broadcast@ssa.gov > Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2019 1:59 PM Subject: The Passing of Former Commissioner Dorcas Hardy A Message to All SSA and DDS Employees  Subject: The Passing of Former Commissioner Dorcas Hardy I regret to inform you that former Commissioner Dorcas R. Hardy passed away on Thanksgiving Day after a long illness.    Dorcas had a long and distinguished career in both the private and public sector.  In 1986, President Reagan appointed Dorcas as the Commissioner of Social Security.  She was the first woman confirmed to this role.  Just prior to leading SSA, Dorcas served in the Reagan Administration as Assistant Secretary for Human Development Services at the Department of Health and Human Services.  She had previously served as Assistant Secretary for Health of the California Health and Welfare Agency during Reagan�s governorship and had begun her career as a legislativ...

     Mike Causey at Federal News Network has written a column titled Teleworking: If it ain�t broke don�t fix it . He mostly writes about the situation at Social Security. Here's an e-mail he received from a Social Security employee: As if the telework situation could not get any worse, the administrator is having the top managers over [at] the Security West building send us moderately threatening emails. One went out yesterday. Speaking to us like we children, he told us that we were to be committed to our work and that our numbers have increased since 2018. It is scary and menacing. He wants the managers to walk up and down the aisles while we work to intimidate us. They don�t want to do this but are threatened as well. �[SSA Commissioner Andrew] Saul is angry that we are fighting back through the media and senators. I am writing everyone. Our building does not service the public over the phone. We do claims, etc. He stated that he ended telework because...

     Social Security has issued a press release boasting about Commissioner Saul improving service by keeping the agency's field offices open all day on Wednesdays.      I think this decision by Saul qualifies as one of, if not the, most bone-headed actions I can ever remember a Commissioner taking. This isn't going to improve service. It's going to hurt service. I'm pretty sure Saul did this not merely because he lacks understanding about how Social Security's field offices work but because he was unwilling to listen to those who do. I'm pretty sure all of those who do know advised against this. It also comes from an unshakeable belief that federal employees are lazy and that if you just crack the whip, you'll get better work out of them. That's naive. Inevitably in a large organization there are a few bad eggs but Social Security's service delivery problems come almost 100% from not having enough employees.      If you're li...

     From Government Executive : Since the Social Security Administration�s announcement last week that it would end its seven-year-old telework pilot program for nearly 12,000 employees, officials have cited two reasons for Commissioner Andrew Saul�s decision: long wait times for customers and an inability to evaluate employee performance. ... [C]ounter to the agency�s assertions, the inspector general found that telework actually improved productivity for employees at teleservice centers, which administer the 800 number. In fiscal 2017, teleworkers took an average of four additional calls per day than non-teleworkers, resolved those calls more quickly than employees in the office and spent an additional half hour each day helping customers. ... [A Social Security spokesperson] told Government Executive that another reason for ending the telework program is that managers cannot evaluate teleworking employees� performance under the current rule...