The Social Security Administration (SSA) is looking to reduce the amount of time the agency takes to process benefits for applicants as the agency transitions into the use of the General Services Administration’s single sign-on Login.gov tool, an agency official said this week.
Kimberly Baldwin Sparks, SSA’s customer experience officer, discussed the transition effort during Carahsoft’s Government Customer Experience and Engagement Summit on June 6.
“SSA is in the midst of transitioning from our legacy … customer-centric authentication process, and we are working very closely with the project team to make sure that this transition from the SSH legacy into login.gov is successful for our customers,” Baldwin said.
“[we’re] not just looking for it to be successful, but easy,” she said. “It hasn’t always been an easy process for our customers, so we want to ensure that this transition is exactly what the customers expect.”
Baldwin also noted that while the agency currently has over 50,000 employees, its staff numbers are at an all-time low. At the same time, SSA faces a growing number of applicants looking for benefits as the baby boomer generation transitions into retirement.
“They are coming in to file for retirement, and so it’s kind of like a scenario with more customers and fewer employees,” Baldwin said. “We are trying to focus on the things that matter – taking processes that aren’t necessarily working today and simplifying them so that they work better.”
Ultimately, Baldwin said the agency will continue to work on simplifying communication with those seeking help from SSA.
“Really the point here is our communications, we need to be clear, we need to make that message succinct,” she said. “We need it so that customers understand what we’re telling them that they don’t have to pick up the phone and call or come into one of our offices for an explanation, so that our offices are freed up to do things like disability claims or working with someone who’s retiring.
