Payment Accuracy Task Force: SSI Unearned Income Issue Team

The Payment Accuracy Task Force Initiative, created in 1996 through a cooperative effort between SSA and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), assists the Agency with meeting its goal to improve payment accuracy. The Initiative is guided by an Associate Commissioner-level Steering Committee. It selects payment issues and charters intercomponent issue teams to develop agency-wide recommendations for policy, programmatic and operational improvements.

The Task Force has selected SSI unearned income for this, its third review. To analyze sources and causes of SSI unearned income payment errors, we gathered information from as many sources as possible during our 120-day charter, from March 1 through June 28,1999. We assessed viability of prior SSA, GAO and OIG recommendations; analyzed 216 FY 1997 Index of Dollar Accuracy SSI unearned income deficiency case folders and the related data base; and made 10 site visits to field offices in California, Texas, and Maryland. During the site visits, we met with 20 field office managers and 57 field office employees; and, in the California field offices, we interviewed 16 SSI recipients. We sought additional input from over 30 key contacts in various SSA components, members of our Task Force Steering Committee, and our issue team’s SSI experts.