Social Security Administration Electronic Service Provision
A STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT
Leon J. Osterweil, Lynette I. Millett, and Joan D. Winston, Editors
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the Social Security Administration with assistance from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-0344585. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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COMMITTEE ON THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION’S E-GOVERNMENT STRATEGY AND PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
LEON J. OSTERWEIL,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
Chair
MATT BISHOP,
University of California, Davis
MICHAEL J. CAREY,
BEA Systems, Inc.
DAVID J. DeWITT,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
VALERIE GREGG,
University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute
BLAISE HELTAI,
New Vantage Partners
STEPHEN H. HOLDEN,
Touchstone Consulting Group
LARRY G. MASSANARI,
Social Security Administration (retired)
JUDITH S. OLSON,
University of Michigan
Staff
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Study Director and Senior Program Officer
JOAN D. WINSTON, Program Officer
JANICE M. SABUDA, Senior Program Assistant
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
JOSEPH F. TRAUB,
Columbia University,
Chair
ERIC BENHAMOU,
Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC
FREDERICK R. CHANG,
University of Texas, Austin
WILLIAM DALLY,
Stanford University
MARK E. DEAN,
IBM Almaden Research Center
DEBORAH ESTRIN,
University of California, Los Angeles
JOAN FEIGENBAUM,
Yale University
KEVIN KAHN,
Intel Corporation
JAMES KAJIYA,
Microsoft Corporation
MICHAEL KATZ,
University of California, Berkeley
RANDY H. KATZ,
University of California, Berkeley
SARA KIESLER,
Carnegie Mellon University
TERESA H. MENG,
Stanford University
PRABHAKAR RAGHAVAN,
Yahoo! Research
FRED B. SCHNEIDER,
Cornell University
ALFRED Z. SPECTOR, Independent Consultant,
Pelham, New York
WILLIAM STEAD,
Vanderbilt University
ANDREW J. VITERBI,
Viterbi Group, LLC
PETER WEINBERGER,
Google Inc.
JEANNETTE M. WING,
Carnegie Mellon University
Staff
JON EISENBERG, Director
KRISTEN BATCH, Associate Program Officer
RADHIKA CHARI, Administrative Coordinator
RENEE HAWKINS, Financial Associate
MARGARET MARSH HUYNH, Senior Program Assistant
HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Scientist
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer
DAVID PADGHAM, Associate Program Officer
JANICE M. SABUDA, Senior Program Assistant
TED SCHMITT, Consultant
BRANDYE WILLIAMS, Program Assistant
JOAN D. WINSTON, Program Officer
For more information on CSTB, see its Web site at http://www.cstb.org, write to CSTB, National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20001, call (202) 334-2605, or e-mail CSTB at cstb@nas.edu.
Preface
The use of the Internet (and other information technology) among the general population has resulted in a rising level of comfort and familiarity with these technologies. Businesses such as retailers, banks, and investment companies have been shifting more of their operations online, seeking to meet customer demand while reducing costs. Many businesses offer customer services online (these electronic services are often called e-business), often 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The public sector has also embraced these technologies, although their adoption in the public sector often lags that of the private sector’s more aggressive e-business adopters. Much like the case in the private sector, governments’ basic goals for such automation include satisfying customer service expectations and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of operations.
The Social Security Administration (SSA), a federal agency that interacts with broad segments of the public, has been developing online government services for more than a decade. The SSA’s e-government initiatives thus far have included support of online transactions relating to benefits applications, requests for statements, replacement Medicare cards, and disability reports.
The SSA’s clients include not only nearly all U.S. residents (both those contributing as workers and those collecting benefits) but also millions of employers filing wage reports. In addition to providing direct services to citizens and employers, agencies such as the SSA are mandated to coordinate and cooperate in various ways (for example, through data exchange or service provision) with other state and federal agencies.
Like the underlying technologies, innovation and deployment of electronic services in the commercial sector continue at a rapid pace. As this report describes, this pace exerts pressure on federal agencies to improve their services continually and to stay abreast of both technology developments and the associated developments in business practices and technology management. Perhaps more importantly, broader deployment and adoption of electronic services offer agencies like the SSA potential relief from the increasing workload, workforce, and other resource pressures facing them.
To further understanding of these and related issues, the SSA’s Deputy Associate Commissioner for Electronic Services asked the National Research Council (NRC) to examine the SSA’s proposed e-government strategy and the underlying service-delivery and information technology infrastructure and to prepare a report discussing issues including the following: the SSA’s current e-government strategy, including technological assumptions, performance measures and targets, planned operational capabilities, strategic requirements, and future goals; strategies, assumptions, and technical and operational requirements in comparable public-and private-sector institutions, and their implications for the SSA; and ongoing efforts to define and refine the SSA’s long-term strategy.
The Committee on the Social Security Administration’s E-Government Strategy and Planning for the Future was appointed under the auspices of the NRC’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board to conduct the study. The nine members of the study committee have expertise in areas such as software engineering and methodology, e-business, e-government, information system security, databases, data and application integration, application of technology to business transformation, project management and decision-support systems, human-computer interaction, and SSA operations and management. Biographical information for members of the committee and the NRC staff is presented in Appendix A. (Ken Orr of the Ken Orr Institute resigned from the committee in September 2005 owing to time constraints.)
The committee held three meetings during the course of its work. One was an organizational meeting by teleconference and two featured testimony (1) to gather information on the SSA’s current e-government strategy, including technical requirements and strategies of the agency, and to learn what the agency believes are roadblocks to potential success, as well as what positive outcomes are anticipated; and (2) to gather related information from representatives of some of the SSA’s key constituencies and to discuss comparable systems issues in other institutions (in both the public and private sectors). Panelists and briefers for the meetings are listed in Appendix B.
In late spring of 2007, during a final fact-checking phase in the course of preparing this report, the committee requested an update from the SSA regarding any additional steps taken in consideration of converting its Master Data Access Method (MADAM) database system and any changes to the SSA’s organizational structure affecting electronic services. The committee was informed that there were no substantive updates.
The committee focused on examining the SSA’s current e-government strategy, including technological assumptions, operational capabilities, functional requirements, and future goals and ongoing efforts to define and refine the SSA’s long-term strategy to support information technology applications and online services to its many and varied constituencies. Consistent with early discussions with and briefings from the SSA, this report assumes that the SSA intends to, and should, pursue delivering an expanding array of online services. Questions of whether online services are appropriate for the SSA or what the balance of resources devoted to online services and other modes of delivery should be were considered to be beyond the scope of this study. In keeping with the resources available for the study, the report does not undertake to develop a comprehensive roadmap to take the agency from its current situation to a future involving more online services. Finally, although the report acknowledges the importance of privacy to individuals and to society, it does not provide a comprehensive examination of the agency’s privacy policies and safeguards.
The committee thanks the many individuals who contributed to its work. It appreciates the panelists’ and the SSA’s willingness to address the questions posed to them and is grateful for their insights. The study’s sponsors at the Social Security Administration and the SSA staff have been most supportive and responsive in helping the committee to do its work. We further wish to recognize the energetic participation of the SSA meeting attendees as a group. The reviewers of this report provided constructive feedback and insights, and we are grateful for their assistance. The committee would also like to express its thanks to the members of the staff of the National Academies, especially to study director Lynette Millett and program officer Joan Winston, who displayed exemplary professionalism and patience in seeing this challenging project through to a satisfying conclusion, and to Janice Sabuda, who facilitated our meeting and other activities through the course of the project.
Leon J. Osterweil, Chair
Committee on the Social Security Administration’s E-Government Strategy and Planning for the Future
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Michael Brodie, Verizon Communications,
Sharon Dawes, State University of New York at Albany,
Carlo De Luca, Boston University,
Marc Donner, Morgan Stanley,
Sara Kiesler, Carnegie Mellon University,
Darrell Long, University of California, Santa Cruz,
Ken Nibali, Independent Consultant, West Friendship, Maryland,
Daniel Schutzer, Financial Services Technology Consortium,
Peter Weinberger, Google Inc., and
Marsha Young, Booz Allen Hamilton.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by William H. Press, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Appointed by the National Research Council, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.