A recent press release from our friends at Social Security announced the arrival of SecurityStat, which the agency declares is “an agencywide, cross-cutting performance management program—to accelerate the deployment of customer service improvements.” Further reading shows that it’s a way for everyone to look at how well, or not, SSA is providing the services that it’s required to do. The laudable aim being to show transparency and to presumably record the desired improvements.
Goals include reducing wait times for the National 800 Number and the timeline for processing a disability claim. The new aims would appear to be modest but considering where they currently are, that may not be the case.
A look at the figures shows that at present it takes a disconcerting 36 minutes for someone to pick up that phone at the national call center, which is a state of affairs they hope to reduce by two-thirds by the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
More alarming reading comes from the current processing time for a disability claim. That clocks in at close to eight months. The best they can hope for is to reduce that to a seven-month process. All this being done while their staff numbers are the lowest on record in the past 25 years; a statistic which makes unsettling reading for staff and customers alike.
Here’s where you can see the numbers for yourself: SecurityStat | SSA