Archive
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Document Name: Beneficiaries (3 of 23)
Date: 09/01/94
Owner: National Performance Review
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Title: Standards for Our Customers: Beneficiaries (3 of 23)
Author: Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review
Date: September, 1994
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Standards for Our Customers
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CUSTOMER GROUP: Beneficiaries
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You worked hard and paid into Social Security for years to become
eligible for benefits. The Social Security Administration believes
you shouldn't have to work hard get those benefits.
The same goes for other retirement programs and for the wide variety
of assistance that Americans in need are entitled to under law. Your
application for benefits shouldn't disappear into a bureaucratic maze
for months. You shouldn't get shuttled from office to office, each
time having to explain your problem from the beginning. You shouldn't
repeatedly get a busy signal or be put on hold when you call. You
want and deserve better service from your government. We're
determined that you will get it.
Each year the Treasury makes 660 million benefit payments directly to
American citizens. For many Americans, these payments are the
difference between a retirement of hard-earned, well-deserved
security and an old age filled with worry, between a home and
homelessness, between food and hunger. This chapter describes what
the federal agencies in direct contact with these Americans are doing
to improve service.
The Promise of Social Security
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The federal agency that directly touches the lives of more Americans
than any other is the Social Security Administration. Each year,
Social Security employees handle payments going to nearly 50 million
clients. They answer 60 million telephone calls and serve more than
24 million visitors to Social Security offices across the United
States.
Not long ago, Jackie Collins-Miller, the branch manager of
Baltimore's Social Security office, got a call from a woman who had
received someone else's check in the envelope along with her own.
Collins-Miller jumped in her car, picked up the check, mailed it to
the rightful owner, and called a few days later to make sure it had
arrived.
That simple story illustrates both the basic obstacle and the great
hope for improving service to customers of the government. Many of
our systems, like the one that misrouted the check, need to be
redesigned to please customers. On the other hand, most federal
workers, like Collins-Miller, are just as dedicated to providing good
service as employees of Nordstrom or any other of America's best
companies. This is the foundation we're building on.
The Social Security Administration has started redesigning its
systems to make them as customer-oriented as its employees themselves
are. First, they surveyed 40,000 customers and found lots of
complaints about the long and bewildering process of applying for
disability benefits. A person filing a disability claim is faced with
a Model-T kind of assembly line. A claim trundles along for over five
months and is handled by about 26 workers just to get to an initial
decision. If the claim is initially disapproved and appealed -- and
many are -- it is handled by 43 workers, and the total waiting time
could be two and a half years. No wonder the customers complained.
The agency has designed a new disability system, with far fewer steps
and fewer handlers. This new system, which was created with the
customer in mind, promises to cut the total waiting time by nearly 20
months. Social Security Commissioner Shirley Chater has announced
that the agency is beginning to implement the reengineered disability
process. The new system will eventually save hundreds of millions of
dollars and will let the customer meet the worker who decides the
case.
Commissioner Chater and the Social Security Administration's managers
and employees made a commitment to give their customers not just good
service or first-class service, but "world-class" service. Last year,
they posted signs with their customer service standards in their
offices across the country. They pledged to provide courteous and
prompt service and full information on Social Security and other
programs. This year, they've added some new standards and clarified
others.
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards:
Social Security Administration
--- If you request a new or replacement Social Security card from one
of our offices, we will mail it to you within five work days of
receiving all information we need. If you have an urgent need for the
Social Security number, we will tell you the number within one work
day.
--- When you make an appointment, we'll serve you within 10 minutes
of the scheduled time.
--- We'll provide you with our best estimate of the time we need to
complete your request, and we'll fully explain any delays.
--- We'll clearly explain our decisions so you can understand why and
how we made them and what to do if you disagree.
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SSA knows that you expect world-class service in all your dealings
with us. Today we are unable to meet your expectations in all areas,
but we are working to change that. When we redesign our processes,
you can expect that when you call our 800 number, you will get
through to it within five minutes of your first try.
Today we often are not able to meet this pledge. During our busiest
days, you will get a busy signal much of the time.
Pensions -- Guaranteed
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Sometimes the hardest part of pleasing customers is finding them.
The job of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is to make sure
everybody who's owed a pension gets one. With that kind of clear
result in mind, the agency started a campaign to find Americans who
had a pension coming but didn't know it. These include people who had
worked for companies that later went bankrupt. The company records of
former employees were lost. Many of these people didn't know the
government guarantees their pensions; they just figured they were out
of luck. And until last year, they were. But a dedicated team from
the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation managed to find thousands of
them and restore their pensions.
Making Faster, Safer Payments
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Whether your benefits come from Social Security, the Veterans
Administration, or some other federal agency, the Treasury Department
writes the checks and makes the electronic deposits. Treasury's
Financial Management Service is improving service in two important
ways: first, by replacing lost checks faster, and second, by offering
a quicker and safer way to get benefits via plastic ATM cards.
Suppose the social security check that you need to pay your rent
doesn't come the day you expect it. As things stand now, you call the
Social Security Administration and set in motion one of those systems
that was designed to please somebody other than the customer. First,
the agency notifies Treasury to stop payment on the first check. You
begin waiting. Meanwhile, Treasury searches its records to see
whether the check has been cashed. You keep waiting. If you're lucky,
and it has not been cashed, Treasury mails you another check. Total
waiting time for you and your landlord: two to three weeks. If you're
unlucky, and the missing check has been cashed, you'll wait an
additional six weeks.
Treasury is redesigning the system with customers in mind. It has cut
four days off the time to reissue an uncashed check. In cases where
checks have been cashed, Treasury is working to get the added six
weeks pared down to one week.
Ultimately, the best way for customers to avoid all the problems
associated with paper checks is to get benefit payments
electronically; it's much faster and more secure. Treasury already
makes payments electronically to many individuals' bank accounts. But
10 million federal benefit recipients don't have bank accounts. So
the government has begun issuing plastic cards to these beneficiaries
so they can enjoy the same convenience and security. The cards let
people get their benefits directly from bank machines or terminals in
grocery stores. More than 10,000 recipients of Social Security,
Veterans, and Civil Service Retirement benefits have government
benefit cards already in a pilot program. More people will soon be
using the cards to get food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent
Children, and other federal benefits.
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards:
Department of Agriculture Food Stamp Program
Whether you get paper food stamps or use the new electronic benefits
card system, you can expect the same high standards from the
government:
--- We promise to let you know if you're eligible for food stamps as
soon as possible but no later than 30 days after you file your
application. You'll need to fill out your application as soon as
possible, but you can start counting the days as soon as you contact
the food stamp office and give us your name, address, and signature.
--- If you qualify for immediate assistance, we promise to give you
your food stamp benefits within five work days.
--- We promise to let you know at least one month before your food
stamp benefits are due to stop. If you apply to continue your food
stamps by the 15th of your last month -- and you still qualify --
we'll make sure your benefits are not interrupted.
--- If we say you don't qualify and you don't agree with our
decision, just ask and we promise to give you a fair hearing. We also
promise to let you know the results of your appeaL within 60 days.
--- We promise to treat you fairly and equally regardless of your
age, race, color, sex, handicap, religion, national origin, or
political beliefs.
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"Partnerships" -- Cooperating to Improve Customer Service
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In addition to all the payments the government makes directly to
beneficiaries, there are lots of other benefits paid for by the
federal government that don't go directly from the feds into
individual mailboxes or bank accounts. Many people get federal
benefits, grants, loans, or aid through state or local governments or
other partners of the federal government. Federal agencies are
setting standards for service that our partners can expect from us.
These standards are described in the section on "States, Localities,
and Other Partners."
Veterans
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The Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies exist
specifically to serve veterans, and their standards are described in
the section on "Veterans."
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Your Standards
These agencies and offices are publishing customer service standards
for beneficiaries. The standards appear in the "Beneficiaries"
section of Appendix B.
Department of Agriculture
Food and Nutrition Service
Department of Defense
Defense Logistics Agency
Department of Health and Human Services
Health Care Financing Administration
Public Health Service
Social Security Administration
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Housing/Federal Housing Authority
Department of Labor
Pension Welfare Benefits Administration
Department of the Treasury
Financial Management Service
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Railroad Retirement Board
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