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GAO-20-426PR 1 (2020-04-17)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaeazq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: cAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Comptroller General Washington, DC 20548 of the United States April 17, 2020 Andrew Saul Commissioner U.S. Social Security Administration 6401 Security Boulevard Windsor Park Building Baltimore, MD 21235 Priority Open Recommendations: Social Security Administration Dear Mr. Saul: The purpose of this letter is to provide you with an update on the overall status of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) implementation of GAO's recommendations and to call your personal attention to areas where open recommendations should be given high priority.1 In November 2019, we reported that, on a government-wide basis, 77 percent of our recommendations made 4 years ago were implemented.2 SSA's recommendation implementation rate was 71 percent. As of March 2020, SSA had 75 open recommendations. Fully implementing these open recommendations could significantly improve SSA's operations. We ask for your continued attention to the four unimplemented priority recommendations we identified in our 2019 letter. We are adding three new recommendations related to monitoring organizational representative payees who manage Social Security benefits for vulnerable individuals, and improving cybersecurity as a priority this year, bringing the total number of priority recommendations to seven. (See the enclosure for the list of recommendations.) The seven priority recommendations fall into the three areas listed below. Ensuring program integrity. It is vital to prevent and recover Disability Insurance (DI) overpayments to beneficiaries, which totaled about $20 billion during fiscal years 2005 through 2014. We have four priority recommendations in this area. Two were made in July 2015, when we recommended that SSA (1) evaluate alternatives to the agency's current approach for reducing DI overpayments stemming from the concurrent receipt of federal workers' compensation payments and (2) strengthen its internal controls over these DI overpayments by implementing an alternative approach to self-reporting that yields the greatest net benefits. SSA agreed with both of these recommendations, but as of January 2020, SSA had not fully implemented its plans to use Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA) data to reduce DI benefits in accordance with federal law or implemented an alternative approach that provides greater net benefits. Taking these actions would help improve the financial status of the DI 1 Priority recommendations are those that GAO believes warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies. They are highlighted because, upon implementation, they may significantly improve government operations, for example, by realizing large dollar savings; eliminating mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or making progress toward addressing a high-risk or fragmentation, overlap, or duplication issue. 2 GAO, Performance and Accountability Report.- Fiscal Year 2019, GAO-20-1 SP (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 19, 2019). GAO-20-426PR Social Security Administration Priority Recommendations Page 1

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