Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/childhood_statement.html/. SSA's field organization tried to persuade headquarters that holding beneficiaries liable for mistakes SSA had made years earlier in its disability process was not sound policy. ———. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. ———. In this scheme, the employer would issue stamps to each employee based on the employee's earnings. The bill increases the income threshold that a beneficiary must reach before Social Security benefits are taxable. Social Security Bulletin 18(8): 12–17. 109th Cong., 2nd sess. World War II became the nation's priority, and large numbers of BOASI employees left to join the war effort. Initial enrollment for Part D ran from November 15, 2005, through May 15, 2006. ———. Two employees from each region attended a training class on the new hardware and software in Baltimore. Administering monthly benefit payments brought the problem of how best to maintain payment records. They credit this early training with imbuing employees, from top executives to clericals, with a fierce loyalty to the Social Security program and a belief in the social philosophy it represented. Income above $400,000 shall be included when calculating Social Security benefits and taxes. The year in review: The administration of Social Security programs—1973. Harmon, Wayne, Jim Demer, Melvin Files, Maryanne Lysett, Lydia Marshall, and Bill Shie. In November 1936 the Board assigned headquarters staff to 56 Bureau field offices, covering all but one of the cities where the Post Office Department had set up its "central accounting" offices. 10 SSA began testing video teleconferencing for hearings with claimants, representatives, or expert witnesses at remote locations in the late 1990s. 1992a. Also, DDSs were under pressure to meet productivity goals. By FY 1987, SSA was installing about 1,000 terminals per month. A poster informing the public about the 1939 amendments. A tabulating machine used this master punch card to set up a numerical register of accounts stored in huge loose-leaf books. In a three-state pilot beginning August 1987, the parent of a newborn could request an SSN as part of the State's birth registration process (SSA 1988, 2). Office of Technology Assessment. By 1938, DAO had about 500 employees using 222 card punch machines and 70 card sorters. The Board established an Informational Service in January 1936 to supervise public relations. In addition, OASDI applicants generally filed a few weeks to 3 months before entitlement, while eligible SSI applicants were entitled to immediate payments upon filing (SSA 1995h). ———. In addition, SSA budgeted for about 233,000 hours of overtime per week during 1974 (SSA 1975c, 35; SSA 1995h; SSA 1994b; Hensley 1994). Backups, and some active files, were still maintained on 250,000 reels of tape (SSA 1986, 22). 2005b. Oral history collections: John J. Corson. Interview by Abe Bortz. The system was "held together with rubber bands and chewing gum—cast-off equipment" (SSA 1995e). Baltimore, MD: SSA, Bureau of Retirement and Survivors Insurance. Major exhibition includes our card punch operations. Until these hires were in place, SSA sent volunteers from its field offices to the hearing offices with the largest backlogs to help assemble paper files. 5 Material participation means participation on a regular or substantial basis in the production of farm commodities. In 1947, BOASI supervised the 12 regional representatives and their staffs, 464 field offices, 6 branch offices, 2,052 itinerant stations, and 13 detached field stations (Davis 1950; FSA 1948). Changes included accelerating the transition to electronic recordkeeping, with rollout to begin in January 2004; updating the medical listings of definitions of impairments that SSA finds severe enough for a finding of disability; and improving the hearing and appeals processes (SSA 2003, 16). Overtime use in processing hearings increased by 61 percent, from 625,000 hours to over 1 million hours, and other SSA components contributed 2,200 work-years toward hearings from 1997 to 1999. 97-455 permitted, on a temporary basis, beneficiaries contesting the termination of their benefits to have both their benefits and Medicare coverage continued through the hearing phase (SSA n.d. b). All of the state records were flawed in some way, and some state recordkeeping systems were extremely lax. In 2008, SSA also added "scheduled voice callback" to the National 800 Number Network, allowing a caller to leave his or her phone number, hang up, and receive an agency callback within a specified time when the network was less busy. Hurricane Katrina: Activities of the Social Security Administration. Although SSA studies did not support this allegation, the press picked up anecdotal accounts of supposed abuses of the program. SSA and INS matched computer records to double-check immigration status so that individuals would not be inadvertently suspended. District office employees made nearly 90,000 talks, 194,000 radio broadcasts, and 5,000 live television appearances; they also manned 29,500 exhibits (HEW 1966, 21). Other technology investment plans for 2010 and beyond involve "Disability Direct" to automate the processing of online disability claims, signature proxy alternatives to pen-and-ink or "wet" signatures, voice over Internet protocol telephone networks for the field offices, "click to talk" capability to connect Internet visitors with a teleservice representative, and self-help computers in field office reception areas (SSA 2009e, 17). The Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984 provided that SSA could terminate disability payments only if an individual's impairment had improved. In 1937, the Bureau of Old-Age Benefits was renamed the Bureau of Old-Age Insurance (BOAI). SSA's Acting Commissioner, John B. Callahan, began visiting SSA field offices, community centers, and other gatherings of noncitizens to listen to their stories and to assure them that the Clinton Administration was doing everything possible to make sure that individuals would not lose their SSI eligibility. SSA also implemented a Representative Video Project to allow claimant representatives to use their own equipment to participate in hearings from their offices. SSA took 523,000 BL claims for DOL in FY 1973 and 556,000 in FY 1974 (SSA 1974b, 24). As of that date, there were 3.6 million SSI recipients in current-pay status; by year-end, this number had increased to 4.0 million, and the pending SSI cases had dropped to 335,363 (House Ways and Means Committee 1975, 11). SSA has a history of rising to its challenges and evolving to meet society's changing needs. One former SSA Dallas Regional Commissioner recalled how complex Louisiana inheritance laws were and how tedious it was to find 15 to 20 relatives entitled to a share of lump-sum payments, frequently as small as $1 (SSA 1985b, 16). SSA internal document. The first task was for mail carriers to make lists of employers on their routes. 2009f. Meanwhile, an SSA pilot study in the Atlanta and Kansas City regions showed that a small percentage of disability beneficiaries aged 45 or younger in 1979 and first entitled to benefits before 1960 were no longer disabled. First, 19 million potential Medicare beneficiaries had to be identified and contacted to determine their eligibility. 2007b. SSA also mentioned LIS in other outgoing notices. Despite its manpower challenges, BOASI supported the war effort in a number of ways. Although SSA has had disaster procedures in place since early days, coping with the impact can be traumatic. If needed, additional information was requested from the field office. As this was during the Great Depression, people were glad to have a job even under these working conditions. The appropriate control card was removed at the end of a step and sent to a control file to track the status of each block (McKinley and Frase 1970, 375). 2009h. Agency under stress: The Social Security Administration in American government. GAO-07-858T. OASIS 6(8): 26–29. On January 28, 2009, SSA announced that improvements to the agency's computer modeling system had increased the number of disability claimants receiving expedited approvals to about 4 percent of all disability cases—numbering about 100,000 to 125,000 per year. Field offices still took claims, developed the evidence, and sent the applications into the seven payment centers for final adjudication and certification of payment to the Treasury Department. Because agencies dealing directly with the war were given priority on hiring, finding replacements for the departing BOASI workers was problematic. One indication was that this work was initially assigned to GS-6 service representatives rather than GS-10 claims representatives (SSA 1973b, 51). 1985b. Gluck, M.G., and Reno, V., eds. Experience had shown that the processes of gathering evidence and making the entitlement decision were so closely related that in most cases, field employees were making the same judgments and decisions as adjudicators. In Louisiana, more than 400,000 OASDI beneficiaries and 91,000 SSI recipients resided in the counties affected by Hurricane Katrina; in Mississippi, about 127,000 OASDI beneficiaries and 22,000 SSI recipients lived in the areas impacted; and in Alabama, almost 125,000 OASDI beneficiaries and 21,000 SSI recipients were affected (SSA 2005c). Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/oasis/july1995.pdf. As a result, SSA was still creating code until the last minute and did not have sufficient time to test the new software programs before they went operational (SSA 1975c, 33). The Baltimore DAO officially opened on November 9, 1936, with 18 employees. DDSs followed program rules, as opposed to ALJs, who depended more directly on the law itself. Use of technology to improve public benefit programs (April 5). ———. (See primary source document: A Program for Social Security.) In 1998, in an effort to help callers file retirement and survivor claims by phone, SSA would pilot "immediate claims-taking units" at several existing call answering sites; full rollout followed in 2000. ———. Social Security Administration: More cost-effective approaches exist to further improve 800-number service. Social Security Administration 1990 annual report to the Congress. The Bureau had so much trouble getting the manual printed that a mimeographed version was sent out in advance (Davis 1950, 221). Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/orals/balloralhistory.html. House Ways and Means Committee. MCS eliminated the need to transfer the paper application information to a computer coding form and then for a teletypist to input the code. In the 1950s, the United States entered the computer age, and SSA once more was a leader in adopting new technology. SSA internal document. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/oasis/august1960.pdf. The agency also placed more than 125,000 posters in English and Spanish in offices of state and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations that provided services to disabled children (SSA 1992a, 20). Franklin D. Roosevelt would be proud and gratified. In collaboration with CMS, SSA assembled focus groups of Medicare beneficiaries and conducted special cognitive tests to assess how well potential applicants understood the application. X-rays required two or three readings by examiners who had received special radiology training. Senate Hearing No. By FY 1970, field office employees were authorizing 43 percent of initial claims (SSA 1970, 19). Today, all states participate, and SSA receives nearly three-quarters of all original SSN applications, and 96 percent of original SSN applications for newborns, through Enumeration at Birth. ———. In 1984, SSA replaced the eight old, low-capacity computers that supported its programmatic workload with four new large-scale mainframes, one of which was used for a program testing network (SSA 1986, 10). Svahn opportunely observed that SSA's computers were on the brink of failing. Medicare was to go into effect July 1, 1966, giving the agency less than a year to implement the program. The year in review: The administration of Social Security programs—1976. Senate Hearing No. Forms that once were printed and signed by hand are now created and stored in the electronic folder and automatically shared with the DDS systems, eliminating rekeying. SSA initially acquired 282 billion characters of high-density disk storage (SSA 1982b, 2), but this soon proved to be not nearly enough. Baltimore, MD: SSA. In FY 1987, SSA expanded this practice to allow teleservice centers to schedule teleclaims for the field offices (SSA 1987, 5). Also, SSA processed an average of 20,000 initial claims and held 2,400 hearings each workday, and processed over 250 million earnings items a year. By 1970, SSA had a stellar reputation as an agency that could handle anything demanded of it. The service goal for 1991 was modest: All customers would get through to SSA within 24 hours. This legislation eliminated the "comparable severity standard" and the reference to "maladaptive behavior" in the childhood standards. Overtime hours had been used in implementing the 1965 amendments, and would be used again now. To ensure that beneficiaries continued to receive their OASDI and SSI payments, SSA also invoked an immediate payment procedure that permitted on-the-spot disbursements to those who could not access their benefit checks. Baltimore, MD: SSA Division of Field Operations, Division of Accounting Operations. SSA News Release (September 30). Just as implementing BL benefits created increases in other workloads and strained agency resources, implementing SSI produced collateral impacts. 1955c. The bill increases the minimum benefit amount for individuals who worked for more than 10 years by creating an alternative minimum benefit. Available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/oasis/julyaugust1985.pdf. Each field office established "itinerant stations" (today called contact stations) in remote communities whose residents could not travel to the field office without difficulty. However, the Board accelerated the publicity release after a September speech in which the Republican presidential candidate, Alf Landon, criticized the program in a manner the Board considered seriously misleading. Baltimore, MD: SSA. During his 1 day of work under the program, his employer withheld a nickel in payroll taxes from Ackerman's pay. Workers at the turn of the 20th century were gaining steam in their … A look back: Medicare program celebrates 30th anniversary. They absorbed the lesson that they were working for the people who paid into the Social Security trust funds, and that these people deserved their courtesy, attention, and concern (SSA 1975a).