Thompson Letter on GPRA - SSA
August 17, 1999
The Honorable Kenneth S. Apfel
Commissioner
Social Security Administration
6401 Security Boulevard
Baltimore, MD 21235
Dear Commissioner Apfel:
As you know, the Congress is focused on ensuring that the federal government delivers better results to its citizens and taxpayers. The Congress has enacted a statutory framework to achieve these results. This statutory framework includes the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA); financial management statutes, such as the Chief Financial Officers Act; and information resources management statutes, such as the Clinger-Cohen Act. Each of these reforms aims at achieving more efficient and effective performance throughout the federal government.
As part of our oversight agenda, the Committee has developed information on how effectively the Social Security Administration (SSA) is using the above statutory tools to improve its performance in several key areas such as becoming more results-oriented and resolving long-standing problems of fraud, waste, and mismanagement. The purpose of this letter is to share with you the information we have developed and obtain your response to certain questions pertaining to it. With this dialog as a start, we hope to work with you on a continuing basis to ensure that the SSA delivers the best possible results for the American people.
Performance plan assessment
The Congress continues to look closely at how well departments and agencies are implementing GPRA. At the request of this Committee and others, GAO recently completed an assessment of SSA’s annual performance plan for fiscal year (FY) 2000. According to GAO, SSA’s plan for FY 2000 is much improved over its FY 1999 plan and should be useful to decision makers by providing a clear picture of intended performance across the agency. The major strengths of the plan are that it:
- contains results-oriented goals and quantifiable measures;
- contains intermediate output and outcome goals linked to end results;
- includes baseline and trend data;
- recognizes other agencies and organizations that share crosscutting programs and activities with SSA;
- shows how budgetary resources are related to performance goals; and
- discusses strategies and resources for achieving performance goals.
One key weakness of the plan is that information technology strategies, performance goals, and resources are not clearly defined or linked to SSA’s strategic goals. Also, the plan could do a better job of describing how SSA will address factors external to the agency that have the potential to affect accomplishment of its goals.
I congratulate you on the great improvement in SSA’s performance plan for FY 2000. I hope that you will work on the remaining areas for improvement that GAO identified and continue to be a leader in results-oriented performance planning.
Need to implement audit recommendations on major management problems
One area where there have been too few results and where there remains much room for improvement is solving major management challenges that seem to persist year after year at most agencies, including SSA.
One problem area of particular concern at SSA is overpayments of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. As you know, SSI overpayments have been a GAO-designated "high-risk" area since 1997. In fiscal year 1998, current and former SSI recipients owed SSA more than $3.3 billion in overpaid benefits, including $1.2 billion in newly detected overpayments for that year alone. One GAO report identified $5 million in erroneous SSI payments to prisoners.
SSA has yet to fully implement 20 GAO recommendations addressed to this high-risk problem area, including the 11 particularly significant open recommendations detailed in an enclosure to this letter. One example is a GAO recommendation from June 1996 that SSA obtain additional data on prisoners who may have received improper SSI payments. According to GAO, SSA is still considering whether to implement this recommendation--almost 3 years after it was made.
According to information provided to the Committee by your Inspector General (IG) and GAO, there are a number of open audit recommendations addressing other major management problems at SSA as well. An enclosure describes 12 such unresolved recommendations by the IG, and another enclosure describes 16 additional open GAO recommendations. Several of the IG recommendations propose ways to improve security and controls in order to avoid improper benefit payments.
Need for specific performance goals to address major management problems
It is essential that agency heads and other managers commit themselves to tangible steps that will lead to solutions and that agency heads accept accountability for following through on these commitments. One obvious way to do this is to establish specific and measurable goals in your annual GPRA performance plans. Indeed, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance implementing GPRA states:
Performance goals for management problems should be included in the annual plan, particularly for problems whose resolution is mission-critical, or which could potentially impede achievement of program goals . . .
GAO recently evaluated the extent to which SSA’s FY 2000 performance plan contains specific performance goals to address the 12 high-risk and other most serious management problems confronting SSA that GAO and your IG have identified. According to the GAO evaluation, which is detailed in another enclosure, SSA’s plan contains such performance goals for 5 of these 12 problem areas. A number of the performance goals SSA has established for these problem areas are sufficiently specific and measurable to permit the agency to be held accountable in a meaningful way. One example is SSA’s goal to increase by 10 percent over fiscal year 1997 levels the number of Disability Insurance/SSI recipients who transition into the workforce.
I commend you for including specific and measurable goals for five of your major problem areas. However, I am concerned over the absence of such goals for your other seven major problem areas. Without specific and measurable performance goals, it is difficult if not impossible to assess progress in addressing major management problems and to hold agencies accountable.
Congressional follow-up
With so many tax dollars being wasted, this Committee expects agencies to take every opportunity to use the many tools available to them, such as GPRA plans, to resolve major management problems. Furthermore, the GAO and your own IG exist to work in partnership with you to solve longstanding issues of waste, fraud, and abuse.
I hope that the information provided with this letter will stimulate you to make greater use of these tools and resources. In this regard, I ask that you review the enclosed information and respond to the following questions:
- Do you disagree with any of the GAO or IG recommendations described in the enclosures? If so, what is the basis for your disagreement?
- Where you agree with the recommendations, what specific actions are you taking to implement each one and how long will it take to complete them?
- Do you disagree with any of the GAO or IG designations of management problems facing SSA? If so, which ones and why?
- Where you agree with the problem designations, are you prepared to establish specific and measurable commitments to address each one of them in your next performance plan?
- If so, could you outline preliminarily what approach you plan to take for each problem?
- If you believe that any of these problems do not lend themselves to specific and measurable performance plan goals, please explain why. Please also explain what alternative steps you are taking to solve the problem and to ensure accountability for doing so.
I would appreciate your early attention to this letter. After receiving your response, I will ask Committee staff to arrange a meeting with your representatives to discuss it. My Governmental Affairs Committee staff contact is Robert Shea.
Sincerely,
Fred Thompson
Chairman
FT:rs
Enclosures
