Despite warnings, SSA debuts paperless disability processing

Despite warnings from the General Accounting Office, the Social Security Administration has started rolling out its Accelerated Electronic Disability System, a paperless system for managing disability benefits, Social Security Administrator Jo Anne Barnhart said Monday.

Barnhart spoke at a field hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia in Cleveland.

SSA has been plagued by a large backlog of disability benefits cases since the early 1990s. The agency's Office of Hearings and Appeals has a current log jam of approximately 625,000 cases, said James Hill, an attorney-adviser in the office.

The Accelerated Electronic Disability System is designed to streamline the disability claims process by enabling claimants to submit information online and allowing offices involved in claims adjudication to view and share electronic folders.

Under the new process, SSA offices "will be able to work claims by electronically accessing and retrieving information that is collected, produced and stored as part of the electronic disability folder," Barnhart said in a statement. "This will reduce delays that result from mailing, locating and organizing paper folders."

This isn't the first time SSA has attempted to move to a paperless system. The Reengineered Disability System, which the SSA began in 1992, was abandoned after seven years and an investment of about $71 million. In 2000, SSA took up the effort again. Under an accelerated schedule, SSA began implementing the Accelerated Electronic Disability System in Jackson, Miss., in January. The agency plans to finish the rollout by June 2005.

A recent GAO report (GAO-04-466) stated that SSA has not completed adequate pilot testing to be sure the system is ready and did not conduct end-to-end testing. A total of 38 examiners in three states participated in pilot-testing the system. The report also noted that SSA has not resolved all the technical glitches the tests revealed-including screen lockups, slow retrieval of medical evidence, poor scanning quality and other problems.

GAO concluded that unforeseen problems with the Accelerated Electronic Disability System could derail Barnhart's efforts to improve the disability process. "Without resolution of critical problems and full testing, SSA cannot be assured that interrelated components will work together," the report stated.

At Monday's hearing, Hill said he was worried about the rollout schedule for the system. "My concern is that the current schedule for implementation is overly aggressive," he said. "Information technology changes are notoriously problematic and significant disruptions in operations may occur as the result of IT problems."

Barnhart added that SSA will introduce or expand its use of technologies such as video teleconferencing, digital recording, speech recognition, and folder scanning and tracking.