Excerpt from A Proposal to Restructure the Social Security Administration's Disability Determination Process: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session, April 14, 1994

As you know, Mr. Chairman, in October 1993 I testified before this Subcommittee for the first time as Commissioner of Social Security. I told you that my goal is to provide not just good service but world-class service to the millions of people who look to ssa for help. I described our plans to reengineer some of our business processes that are based in large part on procedures begun 40 years ago.

By reengineering, we mean viewing each process as a whole, from start to finish. We will focus on the customer's needs, and redesign the process to eliminate fragmentation and duplication within the organization. The goal of reengineering is to dramatically improve efficiency, rather than just make small, incremental improvements in pieces of the process.

Because of the enormous challenges facing the disability program in the form of unprecedented workloads, we determined that our first reengineering effort would address the disability determination process. Workload statistics which showed higher backlogs and claimants experiencing longer processing times clearly indicated a process in need of a radical redesign.

We challenged a special team of talented ssa and State disability determination services (dds) employees with a wide range of experience and expertise in the disability process to fundamentally rethink the way we process claims for disability benefits. We asked, How would we do this better if we were starting from scratch? I am extremely proud of how effectively the Disability Process Reengineering Team has responded to this challenge. Over the past 6 months, the Team conducted interviews across the Nation with more than front-line Federal and State workers and with more than 700 representatives from the medical and legal communities, disability advocates, congressional staffs, and other groups. Today, I am very pleased to tell you about the proposal that the Team submitted to me and the Reengineering Executive Steering Committee (ssa senior managers, union officials, and presidents of professional organizations in ssa and the ddss) at the end of last month.

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