Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program Initial Evaluation Report

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found that many callers were poorly informed about how the Ticket works and lost interest
once the EN answered their questions. One of the EN Summit recommendations to SSA
was to address this problem through beneficiary outreach efforts. Many ENs were also very
concerned about how to identify accurately those beneficiaries who were likely to increase
their earnings sufficiently to trigger payments.
An EN must track and document the earnings of its Ticket clients to assure that it will
receive the appropriate payments. EN staff that we interviewed expressed varied
perceptions regarding the feasibility and anticipated level of effort required to track earnings.
Several interviewees reported that their existing systems would already support or could be
modified to support TTW’s long-term earnings tracking requirements, and some had
developed sophisticated tracking systems. More than half of interviewees, however,
reported significant concerns about the feasibility and/or appropriateness of tracking client
earnings. One of the recommendations of the EN Summit was for SSA to develop software
that ENs could use to track case status.
ENs also expressed considerable concern about the timeliness of payments, and
possible payment denials, once wages are reported. These latter concerns appear to stem
from the fact that SSA has lacked procedures to adequately document beneficiary earnings
on a monthly basis and make adjustments to benefits in a timely manner. As discussed
earlier in this report, SSA has undertaken several initiatives to address this issue. At the time
we conducted the first-round EN interviews (in 2002), few ENs had extensive experience
with requesting payments.
The mechanics of SSA’s payment system were the topic of much discussion at the EN
Summit, and the ENs made numerous suggestions to improve them, including:
• Drop requirements for wage reporting after a beneficiary loses their cash benefits
due to earnings
• Develop a method to base payments on estimated earnings, not verified earnings
• Develop a method to use existing sources of administrative data (e.g.,
unemployment insurance reports) to determine earnings
• Develop methods for full or partial payment based on presumptive eligibility,
with retroactive verification required
• Eliminate the requirement that beneficiaries report earnings to both SSA and the
EN
• Develop uniform definitions of earnings for purposes of SSI and DI eligibility
continuation
• Implement procedures to process earnings reports in a more timely fashion to
reduce overpayments
While SSA has recently altered the wage reporting requirements, various issues would
need to be addressed in order to implement the additional EN recommendations. For
III: TTW Early Implementation