Government Executive - Authors - Jonathan D. Bruel

Will Social Security Still Be Able to Deliver in 2025?

Jonathan D. Bruel and Roger Kodat — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 16:45:25 -0400

The Social Security Administration is crucial to our national fabric and will touch all of us sooner or later. SSA has a strong track record of meeting customer needs, but its ability to provide quality service to all Americans in the future may be at risk as the agency faces budgetary constraints, projected higher work volumes and a shrinking workforce.

Without a rapid and profound transformation of its complex service delivery platform and the workforce training needed to implement it, the agency will likely fall short of meeting customer service expectations 10 to 15 years from now. Preserving SSA’s current reputation for quality customer service will require a strong commitment to change from agency leaders and the creation of an integrated agencywide transformation team to produce and execute a focused vision and strategic plan. Much is at stake.

These are among the chief conclusions of a July report by the National Academy of Public Administration outlining a strategic plan for SSA in 2025-2030. SSA is using the academy’s report to inform its own efforts to craft a vision for 2025 that should be available to the public later this year.

The road ahead is unambiguous. Based on the academy’s research and discussions with SSA leaders and futurologists, both rural and urban Americans will live in a very different world 10 to 15 years from now. The agency will still need to provide in-person service to some portion of its millions of customers, but an ever greater number of Americans will prefer to receive SSA services through virtual channels. These include the Internet, telephone, videoconference, instant messaging and click-to-chat. Secure and user-friendly virtual means must be the primary delivery channels to provide most SSA services.

SSA’s workforce has a positive reputation for meeting customer needs today, but the academy asks an essential question in this report: Is SSA sufficiently nimble to rapidly adopt advanced technologies from private sector service providers that will become the delivery methods of choice in 2025-2030? The agency has met operational challenges in the past, but it must adopt more profound and comprehensive changes during the next decade.

There are reasons to be concerned. Weaknesses in SSA’s investment management process threaten its ability to deploy the technologies needed to meet future customer service demands and manage operating costs. Recent news reports about delays and cost overruns in developing the Disability Case Processing System, a key agency project, underscore this concern. More broadly, much work still needs to be done to align SSA’s organization and workforce skills to meet the anticipated service delivery needs in 2025-2030. This realignment will require a transformation in the agency’s rigid and insular culture, which has derailed past change efforts.

The daunting organizational challenges are complicated by constrained budgets and, in some instances, by policies that inhibit process changes needed to improve service delivery. Congress should work in collaboration with SSA to provide the necessary funding and facilitate policy refinement. SSA must provide Congress and stakeholders with a clear vision and plan to instill confidence that the resources would be well-invested.

During her July Senate nomination hearing to serve as SSA commissioner, Acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin said one of her top priorities is strategic planning “to position SSA so it can adapt to a rapidly changing world and continue to provide excellent service to future generations.” We look forward to seeing SSA’s vision and strategic plan.

Given the gap between SSA’s current service delivery capability and the academy’s vision for 2025-2030, there is little time to waste. Strong leadership and a dedicated transformation team must act now to shape a fast approaching future.

Jonathan D. Breul is chairman of the panel that prepared the report on SSA’s vision for 2025-2030, and Roger Kodat is project director at the National Academy of Public Administration.

(Image via Gemenacom/Shutterstock.com)

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Factors Guiding Public Management Reform

Jonathan D. Bruel — Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 -0400

Common Pressures

Globalization-global pressures to cooperate and compete in new ways;
Dissatisfaction-ever rising expectation of citizens; and
Budget stringency-the need to reduce deficits.

Common Responses

Decentralization of authority within governmental units and devolution of responsibilities to lower levels of government (for example, municipalities);
A reexamination of what government should both do and pay for, what it should pay for but not do, what it should neither do nor pay for;
Downsizing the public service and the privatization and corporatization of activities;
Consideration of more cost-effective ways of delivering services, such as contracting out, market mechanisms, and user charges;
Customer orientation, including quality standards for public services;
Benchmarking and measuring performance; and
Reforms designed to simplify regulation and reduce its costs.

Common Dilemmas

The tension between decentralizing and delegating service delivery (with its greater acceptance of risk-taking) and pressures for accountability to the taxpayer;
A similar tension between the desirability for flexibility and experimentation on the one hand and the problem of avoiding politically embarrassing mistakes;
The advantages of consultation and consensus development versus the danger of becoming captive to narrow interest groups and the necessity for rapid decision-making often forced by external economic events;
The potential of media as a means of communicating with the pubic versus the threat of media as an undue policy influence;
The need to serve citizens as customers on the one hand, while not neglecting the disadvantaged or vulnerable who may not be able to speak up as customers;
Increasing local responsibility (devolution) while compensating for unequal local resources;
Balancing the advantages of information technology in terms of service delivery and the availability of public information versus citizen privacy and unrealistic expectation for governmental response; and
Conflict between deficit reduction in the name of future growth and the need for public investment in human capital, infrastructure and research and development.

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Global Governing

Jonathan D. Bruel — Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 -0400

he art of governing is changing as each day passes. It is also becoming more restrained. An increasingly open international economy puts a premium on national competitiveness and highlights the mutual dependence of the public and private sectors. While citizen demand is becoming more diversified and sophisticated, at the same time the ability of governments to respond to stubborn societal problems is being questioned. Meanwhile, large public debt and fiscal imbalances limit governments' room to maneuver.

As a consequence, important changes are taking place in the way the public sector is managed in countries around the world. Administrative modernization has been ongoing for decades, but the pace of change has picked up in recent years as governments react to new pressures and prepare to deal with current and emerging challenges. In many countries, a fundamental shift is being attempted: Countries are transforming their centralized, hierarchical and rule-driven administrations to organizations characterized by devolved management and market orientation. Emphasis has shifted from mere compliance with procedures to concern for results. The changes are, in many cases, seen as both fundamental and irreversible.

International Public Management

Earlier this year in Paris, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gathered senior political officials responsible for public management in OECD-member countries to discuss their experiences in public management reform and to address the question of how public management institutions need to adapt to effectively carry out the future activities of their governments.

This first-ever symposium was chaired by Alice M. Rivlin, director of the U.S. government's Office of Management and Budget, and was designed to encourage ministers and other political officials to discuss public management topics within the framework of three broad themes:

The setting: changing the scope, role and structure of governments;
A context of evolving relationships: the media, information technology, interest groups and democratic accountability;
Managing for the future: seeking solutions to long-range problems in a world that demands immediate action.

Perhaps because the "new" focus on public management is so new, none of the 27 symposium participants had the same title. Yet, in what Rivlin described as "a very important and path-breaking effort," all subscribed to a basic belief: Effective governance and legitimacy is essential to support the economic policies that promote growth.

What emerged from the symposium discussions was a considerable degree of consensus. This demonstrates that public management has entered mainstream political culture in OECD-member countries. Most of the participants' governments face pressures that are leading to changes in both the structure and role of government. Almost all of the member countries have undertaken public management reform efforts, and many see them as a continuing process. Despite the structural differences in culture and government, OECD nation officials have much in common: similar pressures, responses and dilemmas.

Management Can't Stand Alone

Rivlin summed up the most powerful conclusion of the symposium thus: "If governments don't work well, economies won't work well." Public management is no longer seen as a stand-alone endeavor. It is seen as intrinsically tied up with economic performance. As Director Rivlin put it in her statement to the symposium, "The quality and effectiveness of governance is crucial to national prosperity." But it is not simply a technical matter of getting the structure of public sector institutions right. There are strong political, economic and social dimensions. The symposium participants recognized the benefits of public consultation but were concerned about the costs, mobilizing public support and dealing with special interest groups.

What also became apparent was that reform efforts are likely to fail if management considerations are seen as distinct from budgetary policies. Countries moving toward public sector reform are building alliances between these efforts and see them as mutually reinforcing.

Indeed, important aspects of many reform agendas are inherently budgetary in nature. These include controlling the costs of direct government operations, providing financial flexibility to permit resources to be used more effectively, financing essential training, reallocating tasks to the private or voluntary sectors and assessing performance.

The symposium revealed a concept of public management that goes far beyond the analytic and administrative tools of administration. Public administration, the participants concluded, also involves the way democratic governmental bodies function in a complex world economy, and requires public administrators to balance the competing demands of citizens.

In the course of the symposium, the participants underlined the fundamental nature of modern public management reform, and identified a set of complex dilemmas. The officials recognized the necessity of improving service delivery, treating citizens more like customers and devolving more authority to lower levels of government, independent units of government or non-governmental entities.

Still, symposium participants were unwilling to concede all functions to other governing entities. Traditional responsibilities of the state, such as protector of the general interest, the keeper of law and order, the champion of fairness and equity and the caretaker for disadvantaged or handicapped citizens must remain in the hands of national governments, they argued. h

The OECD's Public Management (PUMA) Service is a principal source of information and analytic work about the capacity of OECD countries to govern. PUMA studies the ability of these countries to make policy, allocate resources and set rules. You can contact PUMA on the Internet at: http://www.oecd.org/puma.

"Governance in Transition," PUMA's recent study of public sector management reforms in OECD countries, is available by calling (202) 785-6323.

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