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Elements of Systems Modernization for the Social Security Administration (1991) / Chapter Skim
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1. Introduction
Pages 13-18

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 13...
... Policy issues connected with the Social Security program figure prominently in discussions of the nation's social, economic, and political issues. The SSA operates 1,300 field offices throughout the nation and 37 teleservice centers.
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From page 14...
... Inputs to its systems are millions of transactions, inquiries, and records -- sometimes on paper, sometimes on magnetic media, and increasingly delivered by electrical connection directly from a computer terminal. Outputs include payment directives, sometime via magnetic media to the Department of Treasury, for disbursement as conventional checks but also as direct-deposit electronic transactions, responses to inquiries of many kinds, and of course the wide variety of reports for internal management and congressional oversight.
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From page 15...
... Employment regulations make it very difficult to attract and retain highly competent and motivated staff, while making it equally difficult to motivate or reassign marginal staff. Budgetary accounting mechanisms -- especially the separation of labor costs from capital costs -- do not allow assessment of the full costs of changes to the information system and impose dysfunctional incentives for making cost-effective improvements.
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From page 16...
... The resultant committee undertook a twophase study. In the first phase the committee reviewed and assessed the SMP, ASP, and the software engineering methods used at the SSA and issued a report in February 1990 entitled Systems Moderation alla the Strategic Plans of the Social Security Administration (National Research Council, 1990)
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From page 17...
... Instead, the committee has treated the elements of its charge within a broader framework, embodied in this report and its predecessor (National Research Council, 1990) , that corresponds to a model of the SSA as a whole (Figure 1)
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Key Terms

  • operations centers
  • broad vision
  • management environment
  • magnetic media
  • insurance claims

  • data operations
  • teleservice centers
  • technical management
  • strategic plans
  • purchased software

  • efficiency arid
  • entirely congruent
  • force mix
  • strategic goals
  • terminate payments

  • organizational form
  • help claimants
  • little utilization
  • reference national
  • correct records

  • apparent benefit
  • labyrinthine procurement
  • claims operations
  • equally difficult
  • monthly social

  • electronic form
  • electronic transactions
  • six program
  • employers correct
  • field office


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