Furthermore, SSA is concerned with the amount of time required to process claims—in many cases a claimant waits more than a year for a final disability decision. As a top-down process, reengineering requires strong, continuous, and committed senior executives from the beginning of the redesign. More specifically, in this report, we address SSA’s vision and progress for redesigning the disability claims process, issues related to the scope and complexity of the redesign, and the agency’s efforts to maintain stakeholder support. Although SSA has begun nearly all of the initiatives it planned to have under way during the first 2 years of its implementation plan, as of July 1996, SSA had (1) not completed any initiative and (2) not begun testing for 14 of the 19 initiatives that contain testing requirements. These designees, as well as DPRT staff who assist them, are drawn from SSA’s federal and state workforce. SSA’s Redesign Solution

In deciding to redesign the disability claims process, SSA tackled the entire process rather than using a building block approach, improving aspects of the process a little at a time. While SSA has been working to secure their support for the redesigned process, a number of stakeholders do not support SSA’s approach. We did not develop evidence that such turnover has had a negative impact on SSA’s redesign. But continued turnover could result in possible loss of momentum or change of scope or direction. Federal employees will receive about 30 weeks of training and state employees about 6. Further, many of the initiatives are complex and have expanded in scope, thus increasing the time frames to complete them. Moreover, this delay also means that no concrete and measurable results are available to maintain stakeholder support. Recommendation

To increase the likelihood that its reengineering project will succeed, given the major delays that SSA has experienced and the risk of further decline in stakeholder support, we recommend that the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration concentrate on accomplishing rapid results through initiatives of smaller, more manageable scope.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the Social Security Administration's (SSA) efforts and progress in redesigning the disability determination claims process to reduce administrative costs and the time a claimant waits for a decision, focusing on: (1) SSA's vision and progress for redesigning the disability claims process; (2) issues related to the scope and complexity of the redesign; and (3) SSA's efforts to maintain stakeholder support.

What GAO Found

GAO found that: (1) SSA is about one-third the way through the 6 years it estimated for redesigning the process, but has made relatively little progress in meeting its goals; (2) as of July 1996, SSA had not completed any initiative and testing had not begun for 14 of the 19 initiatives that contain testing requirements; (3) there have not been concrete and measurable accomplishments to keep the support of stakeholders; (4) a number of these initiatives have expanded in scope, thus increasing the time frames required to complete them; (5) increasing the time frames has several disadvantages, such as delaying implementation and heightening the risk of disruption from turnover in senior executives; (6) in addition to delays, SSA has also experienced turnover of senior executives since the beginning of the redesign; (7) although it is difficult to determine if this turnover has had a negative impact on the redesign thus far, continued turnover could result in possible loss of momentum or change of direction; (8) further complicating SSA's redesign efforts are difficulties in maintaining much needed stakeholder support; (9) some federal and state employees, as well as the unions that represent them, are concerned that redesign could mean the loss of jobs; (10) state employees are concerned about SSA's decision to pay federal employees at a higher rate than state employees for the same job; and (11) support from state management officials involved in the disability claims process has been declining steadily.