Social Security Administration Electronic Service Provision A Strategic Assessment (2007) / Chapter Skim
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From page 1... ...
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTuNITIES FOR THE SOCIAL SECuRITy ADMINISTRATION The SSA's operations are extensive -- one or more of its programs touch the lives of most Americans, from the almost 160 million workers who pay Social Security taxes on wages, to the nearly 50 million people who receive benefits under the Old Age and Survivors Insurance program, to the roughly 8 million disabled individuals and eligible family members who receive benefits under the Disability Insurance program. The SSA also administers the Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
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, 365 days a year. The growing adoption and use of such services reflect the emergence of a suite of information technologies capable of supporting online services and a general public that has a rising level of comfort and familiarity with the Internet and other information technologies in personal, social, and commercial contexts and that increasingly expects both firms and government agencies to provide online information and services.
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Indeed, the SSA uses a range of online services as a complement to the traditional service-delivery channels, and it looks to information technology (IT) to help provide services to its varied user communities: clients (current and prospective SSA beneficiaries)
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Because of these advantages, banks aggressively market online services to attract customers to these channels and to retain customers in them. Experience has shown that the successful introduction of electronic services leads to customers' use of other available electronic services, thus compounding the benefits of the investment in such services.
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The committee believes that there is nonetheless substantial value to the SSA in considering what might be learned and what might be adapted or applied as a result of studying appropriate analogous organizations -- of which financial institutions are a leading example. Although the SSA's operations, customer base, and transaction patterns are not identical with those of a large financial institution, the committee believes that examination of the commercial financial services industry's experience, market research, and product-refinement knowledge would be useful to the SSA and to other government agencies seeking to make more comprehensive and effective transitions to online services.
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Finding: The SSA's present direction diverges from the three-phase progression that large financial institutions have followed in successfully developing and launching electronic services. Recommendation: In order to move to the second phase of electronic services maturity, the SSA should create a focal point responsible for developing and managing electronic information and service delivery -- including components such as Web content, online transactions, user interfaces, research, database systems and other key enabling technologies, and other facets of electronic service delivery that are currently dispersed throughout the SSA.
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First, this technology will constrain the SSA as it continues to develop its online services. Relying on MADAM means that the SSA's systems are not able to exploit modern database access tools and utilities that facilitate support for the full suite of electronic services provided by the private sector.
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Indeed, the committee concurs that a migration will be difficult, but it believes that failing to migrate also poses considerable risks and constrains future delivery of online services. The SSA has been exploring a particular path -- to convert the MADAM-resident data sets to a commercially available system, IBM's relational database system product, DB2, but to avoid rewriting existing applications by changing the database system under existing middleware.
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Finding: The scope and scale of the challenges that the SSA faces with regard to its database conversion strategy merit the input of a broad range of expertise. Recommendation: In continuing to develop its conversion strategy and long-term services strategy, the SSA should draw on a broad range of technical expertise -- including but not limited to database software experts, software engineers, software security experts, financial services experts, large-scale commercial service providers, and systems architecture experts -- and put systematic mechanisms in place so that it can hear and learn from outside advisers.
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The cultural mores within the SSA seem to equate electronic or online services with impersonal service without giving due consideration to the opportunity for the SSA to use electronic or online services to respond more quickly, to provide greater convenience, to enhance user satisfaction, to increase accuracy, and to reduce costs. A final factor may involve the prospect that organizational change would also require an updated employee skill mix to support the technological innovation required for the development and implementation of a service-delivery strategy that embraces online services.
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, such metrics and measures can be the key components in a program of continuous improvement, as they help demonstrate progress in achieving organizational goals such as meeting the various needs of diverse publics and user communities. The committee understands that it seems easy enough to simply assert the importance of quantitative measures in managing toward meeting goals, but that putting in place the details of how to do so may be far more difficult.
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Recommendation: The SSA should undertake to understand the identities, needs, and attitudes of its various user communities and should use that information to establish effective relationships and ongoing interactions with users, potential partners, and third parties. The SSA should explore partnering opportunities and identify the changes and initiatives that are necessary in order for it to enable appropriate interaction and cross-functionality with strategic partners and to support the exchange of data with other government agencies (both federal and state)
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It should regularly evaluate emerging trends in such areas as technology (for example, database technologies) and business practices (for example, by learning from the experiences of financial institutions and moving toward the use of strategic partnerships for efficiency and effectiveness)
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