More than 70 million Americans currently receive Social Security benefits, however, prior to January of this year, some 3 million of these recipients had their benefits reduced under the provisions of the the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) since their employers were providing them with other pensions.
Subsequently, at the beginning of this year, the Social Security Fairness Act was officially signed into law and as a result, both the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) were effectively repealed — meaning that the approximately 3 million public sector employees will now have their full benefits restored to them.
Through the process of automation, a bulk of the impacted cased were processed in a streamlined manner by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and according to a July 7th press release from the agency, all of the Social Security Fairness Act cases have now successfully been updated. Here is what you need to know.
SSA streamlines SSFA cases
In addition to have their full benefits restored to them, the impacted cohort of beneficiaries — which consisted of public sector employees such as teachers, firefighters, police offices, and certain federal employees and their spouses — would also qualify for a once-off retroactive payment dating back to January 2024 under the Social Security Fairness Act.
In the midst of the processing of these cases, the SSA officially elected former Fiserv CEO, Frank Bisignano as Commissioner of the agency. As a result, one of Bisignano’s first tasks to oversee had been the processing of these SSFA cases. Bisignano had set July 1st as a goal to complete processing all SSFA related cases, even though the SSA had previously estimated it would take at until early November to be completed. Bisignano had also instructed employees to prioritize the SSFA cases and in pursuit of this, overtime was offered to employees to work over the weekends so as to streamline this task.
During a Work & Welfare Joint Subcommittee Hearing, when speaking with Chairman Smith regarding the SSFA, Bisignano said, “it’s a number I track every day –we’ve done 99.9%. We have 3,100 more payments to get out the door. That’s it. 3,100. I thought it was very important to demonstrate that we can act with urgency. We did this without delaying any other work in the agency. We got together, we talked about it. It was multiple meetings. We applied technology to move it forward in a manner, better than we thought. And I think it’s what you should expect from us.”
Following this, a July 7th press release from the SSA has revealed that all SSFA cases have successfully been updated and what makes this achievement more of a milestone for the agency is the fact that this task had successfully been completed five months ahead of schedule.
“My top priority is to transform SSA into a model of excellence—an organization that operates at peak efficiency and delivers outstanding service to every American,” Commissioner Bisignano stated in the July 7th press release. “The American people have waited long enough for better service, and they deserve the absolute best from their government. I am deeply grateful to our dedicated employees who are already making this turnaround a reality.”
Other recent achievements at the SSA
In addition to streamlining SSFA cases, the agency has also been making effort to better its customer service and technology systems. Some notable changes include the reduction of the average speed of answer down to 13 minutes on the 800 number, as well as optimizing technology on this number so that “90 percent of calls handled are now served via automated self-service options or convenient callbacks, minimizing hold times.”
Other notable achievements, as per the press release, include:
- Implementing a new service model in field offices that has reduced wait times about 10 percent for all customers year-over-year
- Decreasing the initial disability claims backlog by 25 percent, from a record high of 1.2 million cases pending last summer to 950,000 cases pending today
- Achieving a historic low of approximately 276,000 disability hearings pending, with customers experiencing wait times 60 days shorter than last summer
- Upgrading the my Social Security online portal to provide uninterrupted, 24/7 access to customers starting mid-July