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Federal Register / Vol. 62, No. 28 / Tuesday, February 11, 1997 / Rules and Regulations61159 percent of all calls during check weekconcern nonreceipt, compared to 3percent during the rest of the month. Asan example of the surge that occursaround the current payment days, onApril 3, 1995, 1,091,282 calls wereplaced to SSA’s 800 number. On April14, 1995, the number of calls placed toour 800 number decreased to 229,022.It is important to beneficiaries andcustomers to be able to reach SSA withfewer busy signals, and we havepledged to enable callers to get throughto the 800 number within 5 minutes oftheir original attempt. However, in fiscalyear (FY) 1994, during peak periods,customers encountered busy signals onSSA’s 800 number 40–63 percent of thetime and had to wait more than 5minutes to get through about 30 percentof the time. This delay often occurs ata time when it may be the most criticalfor the individual to reach us, to reporta lost check, for example. Anyone whoexperiences a delay in reaching us toreport a lost check also faces a delay inreceiving a replacement check. Sincemany beneficiaries rely solely on theirSocial Security benefits, this can be areal hardship for them.Our goal is for our customers to haveminimal waits for service when visitinga Social Security field office. Today,SSA does not always meet this goal. InFY 1994 there were 24 million visitorsto our field offices. While the averagewait during check week for individualswith an appointment was 8 minutes,some individuals with appointmentshad to wait over 2 hours. Thirty-twopercent of the visitors to our officeswithout appointments in FY 1994(typically people who have questionsrelated to their payments or who wantto report payment delivery problems)had to wait more than 30 minutes afterarriving to be served. The average waitduring check week for individualswithout appointments was 16 minutes,although some individuals withoutappointments had to wait over 3 hours.This can be a particular hardship tothose who are elderly or disabled, aswell as to people who might take offfrom work to come to our offices.The demographic and resourcechallenges we will face over the next 25years will make it even more difficultfor us to meet our service-deliveryobjectives. Currently, we pay 47 millionOASDI and SSI beneficiaries within thefirst three days of each month. Due tothe aging of the ‘‘baby boomer’’generation, by the year 2020, we will bepaying about 75 million beneficiaries, a60 percent increase over today’sbeneficiary population. This will placean unprecedented demand on ourbenefit delivery system.We are concerned that, in the next 25years, with the prospect of about 75million beneficiaries all receiving theirpayments on single days, there will bea serious deterioration in our service tothe public, and we will not be able toprovide the kind of service to which weare committed. The growth inbeneficiary population is expected toplace an even greater strain on SSA’sresources at the beginning of the month.At the same time that the number ofSSA customers is growing, SSA’sresources are being reduced. Public Law103–226 mandates an overall 12 percentreduction of Federal staffing levels by1999, and this will impact SSA’sresources. As a result, we areparticularly concerned that we will notbe able to cope with the monthlyworkload peaks and still maintain ourgoal of being readily accessible to thepublic unless we make significantchanges in the way in which we deliverservice.In the future, the increased number ofbeneficiaries and customers plus themandated reduction of Federal staffinglevels will have a real impact on thepublic’s ability to contact us. This willbe especially hard on individuals duringcheck week (currently the first week ineach month that benefits are paid) whenthe system will be overloaded. Checkweek is the time that beneficiaries oftenhave the most urgent need to reach usto report nonreceipt or other problemsrelated to their payment, and to requesta replacement check.Each attempted phone contact by anSSA beneficiary, whether over or underage 65, may represent a personal crisisdue, for example, to nonreceipt ofbenefits. Social Security benefits affect,in particular, nearly all individuals age65 and over in the United States (U.S.).For a significant proportion ofindividuals over age 65, the benefitsrepresent 90 percent or more of theirtotal income. For these beneficiaries,nonreceipt is not an abstract concept orstatistic. It may represent the differencebetween paying rent or mortgagepayments on time or late. It may meanthe ability to purchase food. It mayrepresent lack of gasoline or busfare toget to a medical appointment. A phonecontact or visit may be by a recentwidow(er) who is reporting the death ofher/his spouse. One successfultelephone call may be all that isnecessary to enable SSA to convertretirement benefits as a spouse intohigher widow(er)’s benefits. Anunsuccessful phone contact couldprevent us from holding back paymentsto the deceased individual andscheduling benefits to the newlywidowed beneficiary. When individualsare unsuccessful at reaching us bytelephone, either they, or a friend orfamily member, may take time off fromwork to come into a field office. Anyadditional delay waiting in the fieldoffice causes them to lose even moretime from work.Today, we are attempting to cope withthe uneven workload pattern in order tomaintain our level of service through aseries of administrative andmanagement initiatives. For example, atthe beginning of the month, we redeploystaff from other work to handle theincrease in telephone inquiries whichsometimes exceeds two million calls aday. While this practice has beengenerally successful so far, it will notcontinue to be as effective in the futurewhen the number of beneficiariesincreases substantially and our staffingdecreases.We are considering all our options inpreparing for this increase in SSA’sworkloads and staff reductions and,accordingly, are looking for ways toreengineer our various processes toallow us to achieve our world classcustomer service goals and, at the sametime, increase efficiency andproductivity to the maximum extentpossible. It is clear, though, that SSA’sgoal to achieve a level of world classcustomer service cannot be realizedunless our workloads are evened out.This is critical to providing better accessto SSA’s services for our beneficiariesand customers.The release of all OASDI and SSIpayments on single days also has anadverse effect on certain sectors of theeconomy. Based on meetings we heldwith representatives of the banking andbusiness community, the Department ofthe Treasury (DT), the Federal ReserveSystem (FRS) and the U.S. PostalService (USPS), it is clear that the large,once-a-month OASDI and SSI paymentfiles are creating many problems. Thebanking and business community, theDT, FRS and the USPS all have to bearthe expense of providing sufficientresources and processing capacity todeal with OASDI and SSI payments asthey flow through the national paymentsystem at the beginning of the month.This capacity is not needed throughoutthe remainder of the month.Equally significant is the growingoperational risk that is associated withSSA’s current payment pattern.Representatives from several largefinancial institutions made it clear thatwhen the Social Security direct depositpayment file becomes available forprocessing from FRS, they stop all otherbusiness and devote their entireoperation to ensuring the file isprocessed quickly and accurately.