SSA Faces Challenges in Several Key Areas

Over the next decade, SSA will experience management challenges in  four key areas: (1) human capital, (2) disability program issues, (3)  information technology, and (4) physical infrastructure. Succession planning. This loss  of knowledge and expertise could result in increasing workloads,  backlogs, and improper payments. SSA also faces disability  program integrity challenges due to budget decisions and the way it  prioritizes competing workload demands such as processing initial claims. IT modernization efforts. While we are encouraged that SSA issued an updated IT  strategic plan, at present, it is too soon to assess the extent to which SSA  will adhere to the plan and annual reevaluation cycle. SSA is modernizing its IT systems, in part, to support a shift toward  offering more online services. Information security weaknesses. Physical Infrastructure

SSA is taking steps to centralize its facilities management, which may  standardize facilities decisions, but our preliminary results show that the  agency lacks a proactive approach to evaluate its physical infrastructure  and identify potential efficiencies. SSA’s Planning Efforts Are Not Adequate to Address the Long- Term Nature of Its Management Challenges

SSA has ongoing planning efforts, but we have identified two major areas  in which these efforts may fall short in addressing the long-term nature of  the agency’s management challenges: (1) its planning efforts are short- term and do not adequately address emerging issues, and (2) it lacks  continuity in its strategic planning leadership. For example, SSA is finalizing a  service delivery plan, but the draft document primarily contains detailed  plans for the next 5 years and focuses on existing initiatives rather than  articulating specific long-term strategies for the agency’s service delivery  model. Similarly, our preliminary work shows that SSA’s current strategic plan  largely describes the continuation, expansion, or enhancement of existing  activities, rather than proposing new initiatives or broad changes to  address emerging issues. Various groups have called on SSA to acknowledge emerging long-term  issues by articulating them in a longer-term strategy. SSA  prepared its last long-term agency vision—which covered a 10-year  period—in 2000, motivated by many conditions which remain true today,  such as increasing workloads, advances in technology, and employee  retirements. However, the office was  dissolved in May 2008, and since that time the agency has not had an  office dedicated to strategic planning. SSA already manages a substantial and diverse workload and the  demands on SSA from new retirees and individuals with disabilities will  continue to grow. In the absence of a long-term strategy for  service delivery, the agency will be poorly positioned to make needed  well-informed decisions about its critical functions, including how many  and what type of employees SSA will need for its future workforce, how  the agency will address disability claims backlogs while ensuring program  integrity, and how the agency will more strategically use its information  technology and physical infrastructure to best deliver services.
Why GAO Did This Study

SSA is responsible for providing benefits and services that affect the lives of nearly every American. In calendar year 2012, SSA paid over 62 million people more than $826 billion in Social Security retirement and disability benefits and Supplemental Security Income payments. However, SSA faces increased workloads and large numbers of potential employee retirements in the long term. A new Commissioner will soon be leading the agency and will face many complicated issues confronting the agency.
In this statement, GAO discusses initial observations from its ongoing review and describes (1) key management challenges SSA faces in meeting its mission-related objectives and (2) the extent to which SSA's planning efforts address these challenges. To examine these issues, GAO reviewed relevant planning documents and reports from SSA and others as well as SSA management information and data on workload and staffing projections, applicable federal laws and regulations, and interviewed SSA headquarters and regional officials, representatives of employee groups, and other experts.
This work is ongoing and GAO has no recommendations at this time. GAO plans to issue its final report in June 2013.

What GAO Found

The Social Security Administration (SSA) will experience management challenges in four key areas over the next decade.
Human capital. SSA has not updated its succession plan since 2006 although the agency faces an ongoing retirement wave and hiring freeze which will make it difficult to respond to growing workload demands.
Disability program issues. SSA faces ongoing challenges incorporating a more modern concept of disability into its programs, while balancing competing needs to reduce backlogs of initial and appealed claims and ensure program integrity.
Information technology (IT). SSA has made strides in modernizing its IT systems to address growing workload demands, but faces challenges with these modernization efforts--such as an ongoing need to refresh and adhere to its IT strategic plan and a continued reliance on legacy applications--and correcting internal weaknesses in information security.
Physical infrastructure. SSA is moving toward centralized facilities management, but the agency lacks a proactive approach to evaluating its office structure that will identify potential efficiencies, such as consolidating offices.
SSA has ongoing planning efforts, but they do not address the long-term nature of these management challenges. For example, SSA is finalizing a service delivery plan, but it only includes detailed plans for the next 5 years and focuses on existing initiatives rather than articulating specific long-term strategies for the agency's service delivery model. Its current strategic plan also largely describes the continuation, expansion, or enhancement of ongoing activities, rather than proposing broad changes to address emerging issues. Since 2008, SSA has not had an entity or individual dedicated to strategic planning. Various groups have called on SSA to articulate a longer-term strategy, which it last did in 2000, motivated by many conditions which remain true today, such as increasing workloads, advances in technology, and employee retirements, and which will need to be addressed in the future.