Social Security is overwhelmed - Government Executive
The majority of Social Security offices were closed and the personnel telecommunicating since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, some managers had to report to their offices to handle mail duties. The Office of Inspector General, SSA recently issued a report stating, “the Social Security Administration is struggling with a backlog of thousands of unprocessed eligibility documents.” The agency continued to point out the issues around handling the mail and how it has led to a backlog of “thousands of customers’ original documents and thousands of unprocessed applications for Social Security cards.” The report cited a few examples of the scope of the backlog, with one service center had “more than 9,000 unprocessed original documents it had received as early as November 2020, and they found that some of these documents were necessary to establish individuals’ eligibility for benefit payments.” For more details on this report, read Erich Wagner’s article for Government Executive here…