A newly released report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for Social Security emphasizes how poor a job the Social Security Administration has done at processing mail at the agency since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when Social Security offices closed to the public in March of 2020.
The report found that Social Security had large numbers of unprocessed applications, large quantities of undeliverable mail, lost mail and mail being stored in unsecure locations. It is the kind of report that does not provide confidence to people who are told to send original documents to Social Security for processing because these people may never know if they will receive their original documents back from Social Security.
Below is the conclusion of the report that was issued July 29, 2021.
We believe these deficiencies occurred because SSA does not have comprehensive, specific, or detailed policies, management information, or performance metrics related to how it processes mail. Without this information, SSA cannot know how much unprocessed mail it has, what is in the mail, or how old the mail is. In addition, Agency leadership is unable to assess staffing needs and distribute workloads. Without an effective system of internal control, there is heightened risk that SSA may lose sensitive documents. Agency managers stated the volume of mail exponentially increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is reasonable that it would take weeks or months to adjust processes to account for these changes. However, given that these conditions have existed for longer than 16 months, and Congress and the media have raised similar concerns, the Agency has had sufficient time and notice to plan and respond to these issues. As noted above, we are engaged with SSA management on addressing many of the issues described in this report, and we plan to issue final reports before end of Calendar Year 2021. That report will describe final findings and recommendations as well as Agency actions taken to address these concerns.
