SSA On GAO List of "High Risk" Programs

GAO just released their biennial update to its list of federal programs, policies, and operations that are at “high risk” for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement or in need of broad-based transformation. SSA’s disability program was on the list again. Below you will find key sections to this report that cover SSA’s part.

The full report can be viewed at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09271.pdf

HIGH-RISK SERIES: Improving and Modernizing Federal Disability Programs

What GAO Found:

While some federal disability programs have taken steps to address growing workloads, in general little progress has been made in improving the accuracy and timeliness of disability decisions and in modernizing federal disability programs.

SSA continues to struggle to keep pace with growing numbers of disability applications, leading to large claims backlogs and long waits for claimants. In 2006, it introduced a comprehensive set of reforms to improve the efficiency of the disability determination process and the accuracy and timeliness of decisions. Tight time frames, poor communication, and a lack of financial planning hampered implementation of these reforms, and by 2008 most had been superseded by more focused efforts to fully implement electronic case processing and eliminate the growing claims backlog at the hearings level. Whether concentration on fewer, more immediate issues will better position SSA to meet the challenges it faces remains to be seen.

Federal disability programs need continuous re-examination and transformation. Disability policies and programs have been individually developed over many years, creating a patchwork of federal policies and programs without a unified set of national goals. As a result, these programs have different legal mandates, funding streams, missions, eligibility criteria, and priorities. Agencies have taken steps to modernize their programs, such as revising eligibility criteria. However, the revisions to eligibility criteria fall short of fully incorporating a modern understanding of how technology and labor market changes could affect eligibility for disability benefits. More importantly, steps have not been taken to develop a set of agreed-upon desired outcomes for disability policies and programs and the processes to achieve them. Without a federal strategy and government wide coordination among the almost 200 disability programs, there is no assurance that federal policies, services, and supports for people with disabilities will be aligned.

What Remains to Be Done:

SSA, DOD, and VA continue to take steps to manage their growing workloads, but more progress is needed to achieve fundamental program reform. SSA needs to recommit itself to achieving comprehensive reform to improve both the accuracy and timeliness of disability decisions. DOD and VA need to soundly evaluate their pilot of a joint disability determination system and carefully manage any efforts at large-scale implementation. Beyond improvements in agency operations, modernizing federal disability programs calls for better coordination between federal disability programs, in general, and creation of an overall federal strategy aligning disability policies, services and supports.