Office of the Inspector General, SSA
Social Security Administration
Title II Deceased Beneficiaries Who Do Not Have Death Information on the Numident
Date:
Monday, July 9, 2012
Management Issue:
Report Number:
A-09-11-21171
Report Type:
Audit Report
Office Affiliation:
To identify and prevent erroneous payments to deceased beneficiaries, SSA matches reports of death received from Federal, State, and local agencies against its electronic payment records. SSA records death information on the Numident, a master file that contains personally identifiable information (PII) for each individual issued a Social Security number.
We found that SSA needs to improve it’s controls to ensure it records beneficiaries’ death information on the Numident. Specifically, we determined that SSA did not record death information on the Numident for approximately 1.2 million deceased beneficiaries.
