Cutting Back the Backlog

When it comes to reaching Social Security’s goal of eliminating the disability backlog, 2008 included many challenges and even more impressive accomplishments. The economic downturn has produced a surge in disability claims and hearings. If new applications had not risen during the course of the year to unanticipated levels, there would have been a reduction in pending cases for the first time since 2001. As it was, Social Security received almost 26,000 more hearings requests than budgeted for, but due to productivity increases, we were able to process over 16,000 more hearings than projected and hold the increase in pending hearings down to 14,000 cases.

In fiscal year 2008, we moved quickly to add new staff, use new technologies, and improve our business processes. For example, we hired nearly 200 new administrative law judges as well as staff to support them. We also opened a National Hearing Center, which, through videoconferencing, hears and decides claims from those hearing offices with the highest backlogs. We introduced new electronic technologies and new processes to identify and expedite certain disability cases that are highly likely to be allowed. Through these efforts, we were able to virtually eliminate the aged case backlog (135,000 cases) that had been waiting over 900 days for a hearing decision.

These and other initiatives will continue to improve the quality of our disability claim review process and, providing that Congress gives us adequate, sustained, and timely funding, will allow us to reduce the number of pending cases. Although many challenges lie ahead, Social Security has responded to increased demands on our service and made impressive strides towards eliminating the disability backlog.

Any questions may be directed to: rsi5@srt.com