Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal 20240703

Officials from the Social Security administration, National Archives and state department testified about federal services backlogs due to the covid19 pandemic. Modernization efforts and staffing issues. The House Oversight and accountability subcommittee hearing is about three hours. The subcommittee on Government Operations and federal workforce will come to order and we will welcome everybody to this board hearing. Without objection the chair may declare recess at any time. I recognize myself forthe purpose of making an open statement. Before we go to the floor id like to if i can acknowledge that even formal settings like this we recognize that its important to remember we are all people. And we have families and understand that some of the people who do Business Today have been visited by some hard luck in their life with a loved one and without saying anything in particular. Perhaps many of us more than one or two are affected and its my wishes for them and their family in these coming days that can be difficult to families so i will offer that and would just let that ride there. But when you receive information like this, i feel like its the right thing to wish everybody the best. Todays hearing is on Customer Service agencies selected as federal agencies. The covid pandemic invited a stress test for agencies in many ways an earlier this year we heard how fraud driven presentation measures failed in covid relief programs. That was a subcommittee hearing we did was on a bipartisan basis where we universally heard about the frailties of not only some of the governments actions also the impact that prevented measures from being fully understood as hundreds of billions of dollars being lost. But another stress test was they delivered services to the American People and as a person who worked in the private sector for a number of years that have a public opening to them, i will tell you i do recognize difficult it is to not only match manpower with incoming needs of customers but also to do so in a difficult time. With that said, we are here today to make sure we have a clear understanding about not just what is behind us but what lies in front of us and the daunting challenge each of the members of congress as we attempt to also do business with the government on behalf of many constituents that we have. I want to try and be fair. It would not be fair to look back without the benefit of hindsight and in recognizing what our nation would be through. But today we also all recognize that theres some bit of experience that weve been through that we need to recognize that we must do better and i know its impossible and impractical for us in each and every circumstance, nonetheless it is our duty and my duty not just as a member of congress as the chairman of this subcommittee to ask sometimes tough questions. To make sure that we give straight answers. To know that we will report back to our constituents, but also to work with you on making sure that we move forward better. First, are the backlogs. Are they being retired, are they behind us, are theyahead of us . Disruptions, inefficiencies, uncertainty all these things are questions that will be asked today but overwhelmingly this congress has asked and i believe we did it at the end of the last congress for you to be prepared with a master plan. What your plan is and in some way we want to ask how that is going. Its not a measuring stick, its an expectation. Its not a measuring stick that will tell us that we know the problems that youve encountered rather how we work together. As members of congress wehear the frustrations of those unable to access government services. And they have come to rely on the government and you are a part of the daily life too many times of people who need to do business and interact with government and it needs to be done directly and on time. On behalf of our constituencies one of us up here and there will be others who join us today were able to learn about these things. And also about how you ask the manager of the business are going to fix them. The second is are we prepared for the next emergency western art and while covid by and large we heard about something may happen when it did it seemingly took us at a disadvantage. I think being behind is one thing. I think catching upis another and being prepared for what is tomorrow is also important. Perhaps your answers will mean Better Technology. Perhaps your answers will be help with more people. Perhaps your answer will be we have learned a lot and we will be prepared but this should be a part of what i hope today is that you will be able to talk about. The processes that are required in work obviously are ones approved. Weve seen those, we know them but i would remind you that in most peoples minds covid was over 2 years ago the federal government needs to get back to work. The work rules and regulations that have been of the past few years are old and do not meet todays marketplace. And i believe Government Employees while they are entitled to their opinions, if theyre going to take an honest days pay they should work and honest day within the work structurethat is best for the American People. Its not just a telework debate. Its an efficiency ratio that the federal government needs to maintain for all its employees. So were looking at three agencies today, the National Congressional Records Center, cost of Affairs Bureau and Social Security administration. I know that there are different circumstances and yet there are some common denominators about this and that is your people do the work. Your people, professionals as Government Employees, experienced people determine the success or failure of your department the American People expect you, them and us to make this work. So we will enjoy hearing from all three of you. As you may know ive extended from 9 55 minutes for each of you. You dont have to use all 10 minutes i do expect you not to run out of time by saying you really wanted to Say Something else. We sincerely want to hear from you today. We sincerely want you to admit things that need to be said and we will not hold back from you understanding where we are im eager to hear the specifics about the agency plan and i want to thank each of you for taking time. Before we start you and i wish to yield to the distinguishedgentleman , Ranking Member, the gentleman is recognized. I appreciate the opportunity. I want to thank you for convening this hearing and our witnesses are seated before us and obviously members of this committee who feel verydeeply about this issue. I think its fair to say or all of us that americans deserve nothing short then Top Tier Customer focused accessible and Efficient Services from their government. Today we convene to discuss the topic that impacts veterans, that impacts grandparents, all of us rely on our federal agencies as a lifeline and there are quite a few people rely on us in that way. We both it to our constituents, to the American Public to keep our commitment fluid and discussing agency backlogs its important to take note of a timeline eating up to our current crisis. In 2017 the Previous Administration implemented a nearly threemonth governmentwide hiring freeze. Some agencies maintain their hiring freeze was substantially longer such as the state department where the freeze lasted for 16 months. The freeze constricted as we all know the job market and destroyed employee more ill and Employee Welfare in many respects. However since then we have been playing a game of catch up and most agencies have struggled to hire enough staff even in the midst of record low unemployment. The American Federation of Government Employees reports in fiscal year 2022, the Social Security administrations workforce is one of the smallest its been in 25 years. And yet we know that the number of people on Social Security, people who rely on those benefits to pay for food, to pay for medicine has increased bymore than 10 Million People in the past decade. This increase in beneficiary for lack of staff has extended wait times to where they unfortunately and regrettably are today. The Social Security administration is headquartered in my district in Baltimore County and for example in the state of maryland processing times increased by roughly 105 percent and thats in a period from 2019 to 2022. Further extending processing time from 106 days to 218 days. The issues of low staffing and long processing times shared across almost all Customer Service focused federal agencies and im sure all of you can attest to that. The passport demand is still at record highs putting never get stress on the agency. Last month secretary blinken testified before the Appropriations Committee noting the state department is getting 500,000 applications a week for passports and noting that his 30 to 40 percent higher than it was last year so these are really alarming statistics no matter how we look at them when it gets back to whether or not we are delivering the kind of Customer Service that we should be. Demand is skyrocketing yet staffing and resources remain static. The most vulnerable communities are the ones that usually aredisproportionately affected by these types of issues. If we look at our veterans , the stifling backlog at the National Archives and records demonstration, National Personnel Records Center says it could be the difference between receiving military benefits and not receiving them at all. It could be the difference between receiving assistance in a homeless shelter for a veteran or living out on the street. And what really pulls that my heart are the countless constituent stories that in particular my District Team relays to me each and every week as we go through our weekly staff meetings. There is one case id like to quickly call to the attention of those that are here and we will just select a better term and say this is andrews story. Andrew as multiple sclerosis. He contacted our office in brewery 2020. Filed his disability claim in 2019 three years prior and received a favorable decision in 2021. Yet the Social Security administration would not release his benefits. So my district staff and myself got involved. We were able to work with the agency and to finally after all that time secure andrew the benefit he not only desperately needed but that he was entitled to. The best process extended nearly a year after he had already received a favorable decision from the agency. In the end, the Social Security administration provided him with 86,000 in retroactive benefits that he was owed and i would ask mister chairman unanimous consent to send the cbs article that details andrews case and further details how we were able to successfully intervene with. Without objection. My office and every member of your can give you stories about what theyve been receiving on the ground with real people every day. My office has opposed 544 social administration cases, 683 passport cases since july of last year and that demonstrates not just the service but it demonstrates i think a tremendous need on behalf of our constituents for federal Agencies Service for federal employees. One of those employees i have come to appreciate because of the way shes helped intervene in matters like that are miss Lauren Hughes serves as a Public Affairs specialist and a phenomenal asset to the Social Security administration and to the Congressional Office in that region. So i could go on and on but suffice to say thats why democrats and republicans have set aside Party Differences and did so several years back to pass the modernizing Government Technology act of 2017. Authorized the Technology Modernization fund and secured nearly 1 billion in investment into the fund the issues here are more than just funding and more than just staffing. The issue really becomes vision. Do we have the vision as a government to empower all of our assets , carry out their task and missions with respect to constituent services and with respect to being able to make sure what they are set up to deliver they do deliver. I look forward hearing the strategizing need at congressional level and at end of the day make ago real and lasting difference. I yield back. I appreciate the comments from the distinguished Ranking Member and well tell our guests today that we would like to approach this from this side of the dias in the same way that mr. Mfume spoke about it and that is from a perspective of we care very much about the agencies and work they do. They have found themselves in the circumstance where people that need them have worked together. Id like to thank our three witnesses for all being here. The assistant secretary of state for Consulate Affairs are in a bitter. Scott levens, director of national personal center. Chad poise and director of budget finance and management. As i introduce all three of them, i want to thank femme for allowing our staff to come on site and to learn more about their operations to see firsthand about not just the circumstances with the relationship of the employees of learning about the jobs. Assistant secretary better has head the state department of consumer let Affairs Since august of 2021. Were among other roles shell receive administration in the United States task system. She brings decades of diplomatic experience to her role, having previously served in several overseas posts including United States United States ambassador of laos and had a opportunity to speak with her and reconnected with one of my friends, two of my friends id been to college with and had a state Department Career assistant secretary bitter, thank you for expecting me to follow up with them as i know you did. Director of National Archives and Records Administration since 20116789 at nprc he overseas personal related records for both military and Civil Service of the United States government. Mr. Levens brings over 20 years of service at National Archives to his role in leading the nprc. Mr. Chad poise was named director this past may. Welcome to the job congratulations on the new role and he serves as Social Security administrators chief Financial Officer and Performance Improvement officer and he brings decades of experience in Government Finance and management roles and similar roles that Social Security administration and United States department of commerce and the department of defense so thank you very much. Levens id ask you all three rise to be sworn in and raise your right hand and solemnly swear or affirm the testimony youre about to give is the truth, nothing but the truth so help you god. Let the record reflect that all three of the witness haves answered in the affirmative. Thank you very much. I think you may be seated. Thank you very much. Im going to be calling on you here but as you know, youll be given the time weve spoken about and we have a clock system, which is easy for you to understand like a traffic light and we would move first to the gentlewoman from the state department for her opening testimony. Gentlewomans recognized for 10 minutes. Thank you so much, chairman sessions, Ranking Member mfume and other esteemed members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the work of the state Departments Bureau of cons lori harmon affairs and to express my appreciation for the support we received from members of congress and staff for our mission. It is a tremendous honor to be here today to represent the work and the bureau of affairs and oversight of the federal work force. Public servants of the bureau serves 24 hours a day, seven day as week in 29 passport agencies and centers domestically and 240 embassies and consulates overseas. We are home to nearly one in five Civil Service employees in the state department and are geographically diverse bureau serves u. S. Citizen interest and supports the u. S. Economy across the United States and around the globe. 253 employees across the great state of texas are employed in my home state. Ranking member mfume, last year alone, we issued nearly 254 thaw to passports and cards to marylanders. The service is provided to the traveling public and the funding does not come from appropriations and we adhere to same budgets and oversight regulations as if it did. That is to say our revenue stream is treated for all intents and purposes as if it were appropriated. So while our operations are funded by the significant revenue we generate through the fee funded passport and Visa Services, were very much part of the state department and reliant upon its platform. At the onset of the pandemic, the state department including bureau of Consulate Affairs rebeginning to rebuild from a 16 month hiring freeze that reduced size of public facing staff across the globe. When the pandemic hit and International Travel grounded to a halt, it took the passport and Visa Services and fee withs it. We saw an immediate drop in revenue by 50 . It was thanks to congress support and partnership thanksgiving during those very dark days that enabled the bureau of cons lori harmon affairs to stay Consulate Affairs to stay afloat. Thanks to stopgap appropriations, we are able to pay our staff and again, freeze hiring rather than having to let Staff Government its the most important important factor in our ability to rebuild and extending those flexible authorities permanently would ensure that we avoid similar fiscal collapse in any future contingencies. Left many post and passport agencies significantly understaffed and when they were lifted in late 2021 and International Travel began to resume, our fee revenue rebounded and we were able again thanks to expanded spending authorities to begin hiring. At that point, years of hiring freezing have taken a toll on staffing and passport adjudication was down 25 from where it had been just four years earlier and overseas visa adjudication staff was equally impacted. We have been working very hard to make up the deficits. On the passport side, weve increased staff by 10 in the last year with another 10 in the pipeline. It does take time both to on board and train new staff for these National Security positions. As a result or processing times are longer than wed like. Were expersonsing unprecedented demand. In fc2t we issued 22 million u. S. Passport books and cards. That was a record. Were hon track to surpass that achievement this fiscal year by projected 15 . Today 46 of american haves passports up from 36 in 200 and will up from 5 in 2008 and up from 5 in 1990. Woe asked for Early Intervention program crease in the number of passport specialists as well as increased investment to modernize our it. Fy24 budget reflects similar investment in the growth. With respect to inbound travel to the United States and thousands of job and sectors across the country. Today more people can travel to the United States than at any time in our history. Sings travel restriction were lifted, we streamlined visa restrictions and having fewer staff at overseas post and our teams are issuing 22 more visas nowow than at the same period during prepandemic 2019. Despite our challenges and thanks to the hard work of our teams in the field and domestically, were currently issuing more u. S. Passports and visas than at any other time in the history. Ultimately this is great news for the u. S. Economy, businesses, family reunification and people to people ties. We plan to continue our aggressive rebuilding efforts to be able to meet the demand here today and into the future. While rigorously safeguarding our security and were building an agile bureau of Consulate Affairs and were investing in the it and Human Resources we need to ensure the 21st century Customer Service experience. For example, new parents overseas can now electronically register the births of u. S. Citizen children and american citizens caught in crises abroaderer can use a abroad e new online interphase to communicate with officials and before the end of the year, we anticipate that up to 5 million americans annually will be able to renew their passport online and diplomats have been protecting americans overseas and since before our nation had a constitution and both domestically overseas and during the pandemic continued to serve the public often off pearl. The overseas repatuation of 100,000 repatriation at the start of the pan democrat and i can returned to inperson work in june of 2020. The nature of our work is to provide direct services to traveling public. That means the work is extra rewarding and we can issue a visa to a student going to a dream school in the United States and passport to student bidding farewell to ailing Family Member and finalize an adoption for u. S. Family or help an american in crisis overseas seasand were very grateful for congress support and the constituents and navigating this current period of high demand, i say thank you to all members and empty your constituentt staff. You are invalid partners in helping us serve constituents ask very grateful for your support. Thank you seizure disorders look forward to your discussion today. Rv and i look forward to your discussion today. Good afternoon, chairman sessions, Ranking Member mfume, and Ranking Members of the economy commit too. Itit also stores and provides access to more than 2 million cubic feet of civilian personnel records and our mission is to provide access to important records of government agencies, military veterans and their families, former civilian federal employees, and the general public. Were the physical custodians of over 4 million feet of analog or paper records andde access point for a rapidly growing volume of electronic records. Npr employs 824 federal employees and contractors. During the first two years of the pandemic, significantly curtailed on site production due to limitations on Building Occupancy that were imposed to protect staff from the spread of covid19. The spread of covid19 is little known and nprc maintains on site operations tong respond to most urgent requests for records and those to support Funeral Services and emergency healthcare, and Homeless Veterans seeking shelter. To better understand the covid protection and implemented one for safety protocols and incrementally increased facility occupancy levels. Occupancy limitations ended in march of 2022. Unanswers request for military records was 624,000. Since then nprc added 73 new federal employees and 60 additional contractors to address the backlog. Modern auditory systems our call center and partner of Digital Affairs tomo military records ad expedite our responses where possible. As of june 20th, 2023 yesterday, backlog off unanswered request for military Service Records is 266,000. Little bit different than my written testimony because i submitted the written testimony last week and you happen dated it yesterday based on current backlog. Theyve not been fulfilled within 20 workday deadline. Nprc responded to almost 1. 8 million request military Service Records including new and backlog requests. Continue to receive requests throughout the entire period and volume requestin has increased d prior to the pandemic and the request each week and return to prepandemic level and servicing 90 of those requests in less than ten days and 95 in less than 20 days. Dd214 requests approximately 60 ofel the requests that we receid and the record most often needed by i veterans and their dependes to prove eligibility for benefits and nprc prioritizes the requests ahead of requests for military Service Records. Other requests are more complex and oftence requires extensive redaction of third party personal data. The research of secondary sources and they take longer to request dd214. Despite the increase in demand we have a plan in place to eliminate the entire backlog by december of this calendar year. Asked great deal from nprc work force and many f whom are veterans themselves and theyve delivered. Response times on the most frequent and urgent requests are restored anda unprecedented backlog reduction is achieved and earlier this month and nprc hosted on site congressional open house more t than 50 Congressional Staff from all over thees country traveled to st. Louis. Learning about nprc holding to observe this firsthand and meet for the work force. During the event, con cessional staff reported significant improvement. During the pandemic with each passing week, the center experienced backlogaf growth. Today with each passing week, another significant stride is made in the right direction and another further backlog is reduced and however there remains much to be done. Our seen your leadership as well as work force are committed to eliminating the backlog as quicklyy as possible and providing americans veterans of the service. En the newly dr. Colleen shogine made this her topth priority receiving a briefing within hours of being sworn in and visiting nprc within first houser of travel. Nara continued to provide updates on pnrc and looks forward to reporting cocongress with the elimination of the backlog and prompt service on all types of requests. We thank the committee for it is interest in this important matter it welcome any suggestions to improve service to american veterans. Making sure our investigators come in and see firsthand not only the work thats performed and make sure they understand the processes and some of those impedments and we now move to mr. Pois for ten minutes. Chairman, Ranking Member mfume and members of the committee. Thank youw for envieding me to speak today. Im chadd pois, budget for finance and commissions. Theyve touched lives of every american and appreciate your oversight of our important work. I hope to convey four main points. First our budget p directly determined quality Customer Service the public receives from us. Second the challenges we face did noto happen overnight and demandba for convenient selfservice options. And the employees for the services and by phone, hearing benefits and other workloads. Our priority has always been and continues to be providing Mission Critical services to the public. During thesw pandemics, we made unprecedented decision to maximum and lower and close our offices to walk inon visitors by appointment only. This allowed us to keep employees and the public safe while continuing to deliver criticalan services. We also expanded and we can reenter the offices and expanded in Person Servicesic for 2022. The disruption of the pandemic we continuesc to face significat challenges in restoring Service Delivery to standards they deserve. This is largely duees to staffig levels. This is the budget in fiscal year 2022 and staffing level in 20 yearsrs and number of men fih areas in ben fish rares in the beneficiaries and we dont have enough staff to timely serve everyone thats that needs our help. Retaining experience staff and we expect to complete around 50,000 more retirement claims than last year and two more Social Security requests and 50,000 more disability claims and we expect to handle two more million phone calls. 1 Million People waiting more than seven months for a initial disability decision, which is far too long. These delays are largely concentrated in the ddss which make the medical determination for certain steps of our disability claims. Wait types increase during the pandemic because of access to recent medical evidence and reduce doctor visits and shortage with contamination providers and dds faced record high attrition among the staff and challenges hiring replacement statue of liberty to deploy the Kansas City Chiefs pastrami i did, we have increasedfa hundreds of capacity,af weve increased hundreds of backlogs and theyve completed nearly 20,000 cases. Were also working with ddss to improve employee recruitment and retention and includes encouraging states to make dds pay more competitive and recruiting more examination providerers. We Face Services on the national 1800 number and despite the challenges, millions of customers successfully use the 1800 number as primary method of contacting us. Due to outdated phone technology and understaffed call centers, some have experienced busy signals, long waits and dropped calls. We are addressing the issue withs Better Technology and increased staffing. Prior to the pandemic, outdated phone system is transitioning platform and Telephone Service and we have forced and outside of the physical infrastructure. It allowed to serve the public safely and the Public Service and did not provide some prior critical function such as ability to provide wait times and more. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress and i am prove our 1800 number. The 2024 president s budget we plan tol reduce wait times for Thee National 1800 number from 5 minutes this year down to 25 minutes in fiscal year to 24. Technology is another important tool for Customer Experience and more and more customer are choosing to use Online Servicess and modernized and expanding the Digital Services to meet that demand. Impactful highlight a few of recent ill highlight a few accomplishments in the year and weve grown about 25 each year since 201 and these transactions are tests like checking status of application, getting estimate of teacher benefits and managing benefits someone receives. We also lawned our wait time and. Gov in december of 2022 and appropriating user feed babbles and most visited page haves a more user friendly that shares to the test to accomplish. Wove expanded the procuring option for the pandemic and told disability hearings via telephone and video for customers that chose these options. Even postpandemic, these are options that have proven strong success with our customers, in 2023, more than 08 of customers par 80 of customers participate in headphone or video. Our Online Services and Technology Improvements are important, they dont replace the need for trained staff. When a customer chooses to follow online application which is about 60 of the time and need employees to process online application and conduct online interviews. We need sufficient funding sustained over multiple years and fiscal year 2023 president s budget request to 155 billion for administrative experiences and the process increases workloads and continue to modernize technology and reduce backlogs and long waits and were working diligently to improve Customer Service and need your support. We stand ready to work. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, mr. Poi st. We goo to our first member and that would be the gentleman from alabama, chairman palmer. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding in hearing. I think its extremely important. Obviously all of this in our District Offices get a lot of requests for assistance with your various agencies, miles an hourly the essential services and mentioned having staffing issues and im just wondering how your staffing issues might be impacted improper payments. This is an area ive done a lot of work in over the years that ive been here and not particularly on this Committee Found that well over half of the issues with improper payments have to do with antiquated data systems and administrative errors and verifying and staith that arent able to process the workload as quick as they need to and people that arent as well trained as they need. Is that an issue that youve looked into . We havent seen any notable differences and federal h agencs and entities and the difference. Ill tryum to go back and lok at gao report and if i thought of that before i came in heat indexer i was i got that listening to your testimony. The other thing to ask is how is your staffing issues impact pacting your productivity . Obviously it is or you wouldnt haveth brought it up. So staffing alone doesnt affect the productivity. We saw productivity decline quite significantly during the pandemic due to business processes work around. Didnt you mention having shortage issues . Correct. Yourni productivity is up evn though theres knot not the adequate work force. Theres productivity and production. Total volume would be production. So again, productivity itself has many variables that go into it, new business processes implemented and new systems implemented, employees in training and then several things like that. Productivity is not where it was prepandemic but it has rebound. What percentage is working remotely. Org didpa the public sites ad field offices and almost all eligible for tele work. That wasnt my question. Whater percentage of your employees, and you can break it out by field officer or break it out here inside the beltway. What percentage of work force has not returned to the office . We fully reentered in march ov2022. So 100 of employees are back in the office . Theyre also all eligible for telework. What percent damage of your employees percentage of your employeesr are in the office . We look at it by type of office. Field office is 100 . What percentage of employees that are dc based in the office . Dc based, which is an officebased environment and not front line employees, its a smalll percentage. How about you, mr. Levins, what percentage of your work force returned to thous. If you drive by our facility, our parking lot is full. Thats been the biggest difference is returning people to work. And i would estimate 85 of our work force is working on site. We have three small times we transitioned off site during the ban democratic and weve repurposed the space they occupy in the building to add more employees for the backlog. Those three small teams are data input section and prior to the pandemic when a request was received, wed digitize it and transcribe into the Production System and we digitize in batches and people working remotely and about 20 people transcribing into the system. About 20 people working in that one line. How about youan assistant secretary. All of the Public Services with past adjudicators back in thete office of june 2020. Okay. Overall in the department, one thing im concerned about and we have Information Set up in a fairly substantial percentage of federal employee haves not returned to the office. Thats part of what im trying to find out and by the way i think overall your productivity working with the state department in particular has been pretty good and youve been consistby with what is advertisd anyway and how long it takes to get things done. We would like to see that time framert shortened and if you ned more people, wed like to know that. So mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you, gentleman. Mr. Mfume. Thank you again, mr. Chairman. Ms. Bitter, id like to go back to the state department and the Inspector General published, you may be aware of a report in 2021 that found real delays in it modernization andl initiatives forr Passport Services and i dont think theyre trying to lay blame. Theyre simply reported there were servicece delays here. Those delays kept staff working essentially in a paperbased environment and inconvenience in many respects by customers to require the submission of paper rather than apply online. Does that sound correct. Yes, sir . Base odd on secretary generals report, tell the committee what the current status is now of it initiatives and how veil improve processing times but more importantly Customer Service. Yes, sir, we see opr as future of services and we piloted this program from to the public, general public, august to february during this year and during that last time period, 565,000 americans got their passports online, efficiently and securely. We admitted and asked everyone to submit a survey getting passport back and 12,000 people did and 99 of them said they were satisfied with the service. It was a pilot and pieces that we wanted to work on and we took the pilot offline. When we do that, 5 million americans should be able to use that system and apply online from their comfort of their own home. Were looking forward to that and broadly speaking one thing we talk about is affairs of the future to provide to people. We want to hire people and make sure we have enough people people in place to dot work. We dont want to force you to do overtime or search our way out of backlogs and processing times. We want to invest in our technology and anticipate the needs and uses technology to or advantage to create to solve problems before they arise. So were gratedful for the feedback in the inspection reports in the system and weve taken them very seriously and working closely to make sure the recommendations are implemented. With respect to passports in particular, online passport renewal is something wear very proud of and looking forward to rolling it out. Thank you very much. Mr. Poist, i want to get back to the Social Security administration for just a second. Can you describe to the chit tee what you believe committee to what you believe to be or the main contributors to the disabilityia claims of backlog that existed Social Security. For system closing and the medical community and concentrated examination nation and number of providers falling and you have same time dds in the state having recruitment and retention challenges. So were facing the third year of historic levels of attrition in the states. In 2021, 20 attrition for the disability examiners and in 2022, it rose to 25 for the disability examiners and weve experienced a fall back to the 2021 level. Weve seen attrition averaging between 12 and 15 . Itll make us more efficient on the sceneam and its really a perfect storm of the budget work around and essentially the difficulty in getting medical records if i heard you correctly and recruitment and attention issues, attrition is continuing to go up any contribution to the backlog because of telework practices . I dont believe theres any contributions dueue to telework. Hasth telework assisted in wt youre doing or has it slowed the process . . Telework aloed us to contie our mission and without telework, i dont want to think of what might have happened. What about now that the pandemic is over. Is that would you consider that to be as the other three area as cricketer to the backlogs or an asset to doing away with backlogs . Iwo dont believe its either an asset or contributor. Each state thereses 52 separate ddss across the country and each has their own telework policies. Im always reminded and i remind officers of the last letters in telework are working and people inss telework are in fact working. The question becomes are they being monitored in such a way their work is productive or even more productive. Gentleman yields back his time and hes recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Is this your testimony that youre saying that telework has not impacted the backlog and the americans occur through your perspective and in your juxtajurisdiction authority. Its a stunning testimony is virtually every american watching has been impacted in some way and our immediate family or those that we serve in our community and our state, weve been subject to very long waitit times that have coincided with covid. When telework largely began, that thing was created at that time. But surely you know what im referring to. Massivei numbers percentages of the work force was determined for the determination for them being correct and most certainly shifted towards a large percentage of work force being forced to work and normally included in theco body and not nearly dysfunctional and committed and participating remotelyly and its involved and telling the committee that youre satisfied with telework as compared to on site, inperson office work in a level ofmm performance that you percee from each. That what youre saying . Theres many contributing factors here again and budget and staffing are probably two of the largest ones and lead the telework contributing commuter. It will not do that and regarding the wait times were dealing with, how is it that Social Security can move so fast when the spouse of an elder dies to decrease their benefits but they got to wait, 250 days for a response on a application through the very efficient telework force that we have in place and how can you move so fast when someone dies . Im not an operational expert. Id have to i did defer that back to operational experts. Thats the way it is. Americans watching know what im talking about. We have annealedder in our family inshelledder in our family an elder in our family and spouse dies and almost immediate. They receive a letter their benefits are being reduced by a certain amount and if they dared, they have collected for an additional month or so, they get billed for that. They seem to work very fast in that case but across the country where waiting times are over 20020 days 220 days. Ms. Bitter, some of your work force operating under challenging conditions and id say,me well, do you think telewk similar pacted and i must say that my offices interaction with your Office Especially in new Orleans Office and those guys bend over backwards to help americans that find themselves in a biden with the passport application and they seem to work miracles and i want to extend my gratitude for that. The larger picture im concerned about with worse force presence in the office across your Jurisdictional Authority would you address that and its compared to sell work, maam. Thank you, sir, and thank you for the kind words about the new orleans passport agent sixer were very proud of them. Theyre throughout s this, i cat speak to the broader state department and what folks are doing and in our office we see plenty of people around and there are days when some people work from home but for the most part do you know what the numbers or percentages are . I dont. We can get back with you. Get back to us and i would ask the same of mr. Levins and poist to respond to the committee with the given committee and on site work versus telework. Mr. Chairman, my time is expired. I fieldhe to you. Thank you, mr. Chairman, we need to make sure were funned and functional and applying for veteransu benefits and apply for the most vulnerable populations and low income and people of color and those suffer the most when our agencies cant do their job. Cu we cant hamstring those agencies and then cry foul when they dont work. Republicans have starved the agencies for m resources for moe than a decade and current backlog turning routine into emergencies andnd this is a student at university of pittsburgh and plan to go on a mission to honduras and lead a teem to help the people there. All though he applied well in advance, the backlog meant that my District Team had to help him to travel to another state to get a same day passport at buffaloo Passport Office and current backlog and only those that can afford to travel out of state to take a one day appointment andav pay the increased cost can obtain a passport to travel abroad in time. My district in pittsburgh, two closest are buffalo and dc. Hour and four hour drive respectively. Im extremely appreciative of my districts hard work but situations like this shouldnt be the norm. Ms. Bitter, any plans to expand the number of locations offering same based services to that piece so people dont have to travel hours away . Thank you for the question. I appreciate it. I absolutely understand why its very important to have as many opportunities for people to be able to apply for a passport in person. Across the unit, theres 7,000 facilities where people can go and apply in person for a passport. We do a lot of monitoring and data to see exactly whether we are able to meet the needs of people across the United States. Our data shows 95 of customers reside within 25 miles of acceptance facilities and at 90 of americans, live within a five hour drive of counter, which is where you can get same day service. Its what we think we need to do is invest more in insuring we have technology and systems are modernized and were able to meet service demands and that said, with respect to acceptance facilities in particular, were always looking for more places can provide service to people. Happy to work with our staff toe see if theres more places within your district or close by where we can ensure that people can be seen in person. Thank you, andnd i hope that that also mean as commitment to working more with our District Offices ton better expedite tht process. Another turning over of my remember that can m forget how its part of how we got here and trump era policies and decimated the work force and agencies and now Social Security administration saw tumultuous work force in years and increasing the people they serve by more than 10 million in the past decade and 2018 trump executive power of workers and bindery versed policy and appropriating millions of american the benefits they rely on and work at in partnership with Public Services and not opening with contract negotiations and actor President Biden reversed trumpera policy. Thanks for that question. So we have Great Partnership with actually all three of unions including afge. We actually last summer we did six contract it articles with afg and another six articles. Okay. Thank you. Often we get the most word and yet the hardest work and one of my constituents was listed mistakenly and process of fixing issues some medicaid payments were listed and lost vital money and strict worked with fsa to quickly fix the issue and they issued them a reimbursement check but again, if fsa had the resources and ssa had the resourcesf and funding they ne, my team wouldnt need to step in and we do have positive steps being taken despite all that. Mr. Levins, briefly explain when the tmf is . Yes, the tmf was a vehicle we were able to leverage to you basically get a loan of replacement Production System, Production System is about 20 years old and its out of date and need of replacement. One of the high value assets with those funds were able to Begin Development anden were targeting deployment in december of this year. Thank you. I will be respectful of my time. I did want to add my republican colleague seems to invested in fixing backlogme on the agencies but they need to understand that cutting fund asking not the answer. We have need to invest in the people and the constituents get the service they deserve from their government. I yield back. The distinguished january from florida. Gentleman from florida. Thanknk you, mr. Chairman. Quick comment onn spending leves and federal agencies spending up over more than 40 address the needs of the American People while not wasting the money of the American People to the Witness Panel thank you for being here i will propose a couple of questions here when you can answer whether it is acceptable or not miss bitter im gonna start with you. And government that forces and essential business only policy while simultaneously paying its employees full salaries while millions of americans weigh an inexcusable amount of time for basic required services. Is that acceptable or not . Im sorry sir, the question is . If we develop and essential businesses only policy but everyone is still being paid fulltime full benefits while americans are having to wait exorbitant amount of times. Frankly they have to call their member of congress to help we through the bureaucracy, is that acceptable . Or is it not acceptable . I want to understand the questions are, please forgive. Me essential services, i think what i hear you asking is about part of the government that were closed except to essential services. Is that correct . Yes maam. Is that acceptable or not . I can speak only for my organization in for the Pepper Services which i think people are most interested in. We have been again open since june of 2020 we had interruptions to her service because of the pandemic but we never stop serving the public. I would argue it has been very delayed. Thank you for your question. I will never forget marta 2020. The day that the pandemic hit mr. Elevens. I agree. We all remember march of 2020. The question is in september 2020 and march of 2021 september 2021 in march of 22. Is it still acceptable for the American People to require services of their government to not be able to get them in a timely fashion because we have members of the federal workforce not at their post doing their job . Is that acceptable or . Not i will speak for our office. We never entirely closed. From day one we have people there mr. Poist, thank you mr. Levins. Mr. Poist, is that acceptable or not . Like the other two panelists, our office is never close to the public. They were by appointment only. What percentage of your workforce is actually in the office in the calendar year of 2021 . I will excuse you for 2020, i get. It early pandemic. Everyone is trying to figure out what was going on. What is your office fully open in 2021 . No we were. Not in 2022 . They. Were fully open. Everyone is back to work 100 and 2022. Obviously not 100 . We know people get sick, people call. Out he had, essential, your entire workforce available to you in the year 2022 . The end of march 22 we had fully rented our offices. It took about a year and a half or everyone to come back. Is that correct . That is correct. No problem with that delay with people coming at work . I dont see a problem. That is the problem, mr. Poist. You dont see a problem with that. I will tell you right now the American People see a big problem with that. When people call my office. This is not a partisan thing. It could be an office every republican member or democratic member of congress. It doesnt matter. People call and looking for Social Security or pass for services trying to figure out how to get something done. They are not getting an answer. They get hung up on the phone. They call our offices. When we call, i get, it everyone is jumping through hoops to answer the call of a Congressional Office. You guys dont think that there is a problem with that . I do. Listen, we will take care of every constituent request. It doesnt matter who the constituent is. It is unacceptable. I yield back gentlewoman yields back its time the gentlewoman from new mexico miss stansbury. I want to thank the employees and the agencies that are with us here today. I want to say that casework and helping new mexicans is the bread and butter of my Congressional Office. It is a huge percentage of the work they do on behalf of my constituents that includes everything from helping our veterans to helping our elders and seniors were Social Security. Helping with immigration issues with the state department. These are very serious issues. Obviously all of us and all of our constituents are experiencing real life impacts that are affecting their families and their lives. I do want to take a moment because it really bothers me when my colleagues bring folks in front of this committee and Oversight Committee and attack our federal public servants. Folks who are literally working for us everything go day to try to address these issues the facts are that when you freeze hiring when you cut pay, when you dot backfill jobs and when you consistently attacked federal employees that affects their morale it affects federal hiring, and it affects the services that our agencies are able to actually provide to the American People. The facts show that when we are not adequately funding our agencies, when we are not adequately staffing our agencies, when we do not support our federal personnel we see the kind of issues we are seeing here today. Obviously we want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that the constituents across the u. S. , my district in particular, are facing. New mexico is a place where a disproportionate number of our families are low income. Seniors depend on their access to Social Security to live. In some cases, check to check. We also have one of the highest percentages of the number of individuals who are veterans who have served in our military. We are very grateful for their service. I have to tell you, in preparation for this hearing, i spoke indepth with our staff about their casework and what they have been seeing in each of our federal agencies. In fact we have Social Security Service Center in my district in albuquerque. First of all when it comes to Social Security i agree with my colleague on the other side of the aisle on this issue. Folks who are on Social Security, many of them are elders. Many of them did not feel comfortable using some of the technology that the federal government is trying to transition to. When they call our regional offices. Or they call the 800 number and they get a run around by an employee who is not physically in the office, it means that they are not going to be able to get the check. It means they wont be able to pay their rent. It means they are not gonna be able to go Grocery Shopping and put food on the table. For many of the folks who are also living with disabilities it means theyre also not able to get qualified for their Disability Support systems. One of my asks, i hope that you will take this back, mr. Poist, to the Social Security administration and to those who are up the chain and listening today, we do need those offices reopened. We do need more staff, physically, in person. We need to not believing our elder seniors and people with disabilities standing in long lines outside of Social Security offices trying to get their Social Security checks and benefits approved. I do want to make that point. Secondly, miss bitter, i am very appreciative of your work. I will tell you i think everyone here is having this experience right now. The passport backlog the backlog on immigration and other issues we are seeing is astronomical right now. We have not received an adequate answer, in my office, about why we are suddenly hitting this wall. Normally our regional folks are fantastic. They help us all problems when we call it reactor help. Now we are even running into some huge problems. Can you please explain why are we seeing this backlog . When do you hope actually get it resolved . Thank you for the question, congresswoman. I just want to clarify we are talking about passports . Yes. Thank you. So, for the big picture and a back up and explain a little bit about where we are, we are fee funded. Our revenues come from fees paid for the services we provide. Like the rest of the state department, we went into the pandemic at a deficit from hiring freezes in prior years. Because of fees funded, travel stopped. Our fees stopped. We had to implement further hiring freezes. I had the time travel came back and our fees rebounded, about 18 months ago, we were starting 25 down. Miss bitter, im so sorry to interrupt you. But we are short on time. Can you tell us when you expect to be caught up on this backlog . We anticipate by the end of the counter year we will be back at the prepandemic waiting level. [inaudible] wait times continuing to fall incrementally. Thank you, mister chairman i know im out of town but i did want to say one quick thing. Mr. Levins, im grateful that you are here today. We are also seeing significant backlogs and getting those federal records for our veterans. In fact, one of my constituents was unable to get a Veterans Home loan because he did not get his paperwork in time. Please let us know how we can help support your agencies we the outcome was determined by 11 percent of the budget. Our leaders preemptively removed 89 percent of spending from any conversation. We are 32 trillion in debt. We are on an unsustainable path and it is a National Security threat to the country so the solution lies in threeareas. Healthcare, immigration and Social Security. Im going to begin vice saying we do not take away anyones Social Security but r we have structural decisions here. What year was Social Security created. And what was the retirement age in the Social Security act of 1935. 65 was the answer. Do you know what Life Expectancy was in 1935 . 59. That math works. It doesnt take an actuary model to see that most people arent living in their 59th dont get Social Security until 65. That math works what is retirement age now . 67 is generally the earliest most people can retire at this point. Isthat fair . And Life Expectancy in 2023 west and mark 76. 76. So we have a problem. We have a problem. I have here the 2003 annual report of the board of trustees of the federal old age and Survivors Insurance and federal Disability Insurance trust fund. They require are required to do a medication to congress and in this communication, it says. Ill summarize it. Basically weve got 10 years at best until we go into austerity where individuals that paid in benefits from these programs will not be able to meet beour obligations. You know what happens when we go into austerity measures for Social Security . Ill have to get back on that one. The report says nothing is done 80 percent of benefits. In 2023 there is discrepancy as to what yearthis is. A couple of models say theres going to be almost 3 years. The challenge here is that the people that are e responsible for administering these benefits are saying theres a problem. And im actually just going to read the trustees reckon that lawmakers address the projected trust Fund Shortfall in a timely way to say the necessary changes gradually and give beneficiaries time to adjust. Implementing changes sooner rather than later would addto the share of revenue scheduled benefits. Social security will play a Critical Role in 118 million coveredworkers and their families during 2023. With informed discussion and timely legislative action Social Security can protect your generations. People the people responsible for assuring these programs have a problem and they Want Congress to do something about it. Our leaders preemptively said not going to address Social Security Healthcare Administration to result 32 million of debt. Was brief talk but that never has materialized. So i just think this is a major problem. I think the longer we wait the worse it will get an its incredibly irresponsible for us to not begin conversations on how to save Social Security causes people responsible for meeting the program are saying theres a major problem. The American People deserve better and i hope this congress can get together and find a path forward because the alternative is very bad for the American People and if we were sent here to solve problems this is a big problem and it is that past time we gave it the attention it is due and with that mister chairman i youll. The distinguishedgentleman from district of columbia is recognized. Thank you mister chairman. For more than a decade, Congressional Republicans or their majorities have sought to severely constrain the budget causing harm to agencies so this is a question for all of the witnesses here today. Is your agency able to function properly if it is underfunded, yes, sir no . No. No. I would say we are not. In 2017 Congressional Democrats find a letter addressing concerns to thenPresident Trump the social administrations declining budget would affect services to some of americas most vulnerable citizens. I ask unanimous consent to insert this letter into the record. Without objection that letter will be entered. Thank you. That year the social and Security Administration led to the closure of 64 field officers nationwide. A burgeoning hearing backlog with an average of 540 waiting, day waiting period. Increased wait times at every point of contact and an extended duration for retirement and disability. Because of this higher underfunding Social Security administration has imposed an agencywide hiring freeze multiple times, forcing fewer employees to serve more constituents. In 16 out of 20 last appropriation cycles, Social Security received definitely less than it told congress it needed. How has this consistent underfunding affected your agencys ability to serve Older Americans and those with disabilities. Thank you for that question. The history of underfunding Social Security anhas led to some of the challenges we talked about today. In fiscal year 2022 we did receive an increase in our operation in 2023 that has allowed us to rebuild staffing. Im pleased to report we are up about 2000 people from where we were fiscal year 2023 but the underfunding youre asking about it also centered our ability to implement new it initiatives across the agency s limited our ability to fund online operations to workdown some of these critical backlogs. Mister forrest this is another question for you. In 2022 the Social Security administration reported a smaller workforce in 25 years , the result of funding the number of beneficiaries the agencies are increased by more than 10 Million People in the past that they field offices, Payment Centers and disability sdetermination Services Agencies around the country continue to operate under the effects of decreased staffing while also helping more people at some of the most vulnerable and sensitive moments. Sustained funding cuts have chopped Social Security administrations currentbudget. And adjusted for inflation is funding has decreased more than 17 percent over the last 17 years. At the same time erlargely because of an aging population the number of people qualifying for benefits has decreased 21 percent so mister forrest, how would sufficient funding and staffing affect nuyour agencys ability to provide Customer Service to Older Americans and those experiencing adisability . So with the support of our score in the fiscal year residents budget request i think the key significant improvements to almost all our Customer Service metrics and i as i mentioned we see the rate tying increase from 35 this year to 20 minutes next year. We also see all parts of the disability process improve as well in 2024. We hiwould also be continuing to modernize our it systems and develop services to help customers reach an online divergent. Congress needs to provide Adequate Funding to federal agencies to bolster their workforce and by providing workers quick compensation, offering comparable benefits and exploring other steps to attract the next iteration of federal workers, otherwise it may be difficult for agencies to make progress on backlogs and improve Customer Service and mister chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. The gentleman from North Carolina Mister Edwards is recognized. Thank you mister chair and i certainly appreciate you convening this hearing. Its important for us to understand how our federal agencies are working, how they are failing and how we can better provide service to the americans that pay their taxes and expect a high level of service. Theres an awful lot to unpack here with three distinguished folks like this but id liketo focus just a bit on passports. It seems to be one of the issues that my office deals with the most. And dont get me wrong. Im excited to be in a place and my staff certainly is eager to help those with passport issues s and we get all kinds of calls from folks that need to go toweddings and honeymoons and sphave his mistress. Vacations at of a lifetime and seem to not be able to get service from the state department on passports. In fact, while i see the role of the Congressional Office as being one to help break this logjam, i feel that my office is now often the first point of contact. In fact, there have been situations where constituents would call and ask for help with a passport to a Passport Agency and be told by that agency you needto call your congressman. K and then my staff takes in the information and turns around and calls the agency. It seems to be a very awkward, inefficient way to run things. Ckso i have just a few questions on that. Miss bidders, i think i heard you say 100 percent of the employees in im going to call it the department of state are backat work alive. Is that correct . All our passport applicants are open since june 2020 with theirstaffing. I get reports because theres so many folks that are told when they have to go visit an Office Sometimes in charleston and sometimes in atlanta, i represent North Carolina in the southeast that folks have driven all the way to charleston to see the worst. Is that something you would be aware of or can you think of a reason why the Passport Office might havedoors closed . Thank you for the question. I should also say first of all its important to us to be able to work with your staff to be able to draw attention to problems that people may be having. We have most of our Passport Centers and agencies have public counters. They see 20,000 people per week on an emergency basis. We tried to publicize widely our Service Expectations, where at 10 to 13 weeks so people can plan for theirtrip. It happens that charleston is not one of the agencies that has a public character but i think one of your constituents would be in atlanta. We sent a number of folks to atlanta. What are the performance matrix for your agency . How do you measure success . How do you measure productivity of employees . How do i measure productivity . Overall what we want to see is a reduction in weight times. We think they are high and we expect they will be going down in the summer back to pandemic levels by the end of the year. There are negotiated with the Service Expectations centers, i dont know off the top of my head what they are. Its a bit vague to me as a businessperson. And i see hear you saying youre looking for a reduction in weight times. What are the weight times right now . Right now it is 10 to 13 weeks is the Service Expectation for a regular passport. We think its 7 to 9 weeks to obtain a passport. Rethose are the times right now. Do you have a goal for your agency what it should be . Prepandemic although its seasonal 6 to 8 weeks and 2 to 3 or four weeks for exercise. We anticipate it will be this calendar year. We were there at the beginning of this calendar year. I think 7 to 9 weeks. We are experiencing unprecedented demand. Last year we issued 22 million passport books and cards which is the most ever and this year we are on track to do 50 percent above that and that accounts for the waittime. So that lends another question. Could we have anticipated, should we have anticipated the pent up demand which appears to me what were experiencing after covid. Folks are trying to make up for lost trips. Is there something we could have done to anticipatethat demand . What weve been doing is continuing to aggressively higher passport adjudicators. We came out of the pandemic after hiring freezes that we were rebuilding from and hiring freezes because of the loss that we collect for travel. We were 25 percent low where we had been four years before. So weve been working very hard to rehire people, to hire as much staff as possible. We hired 10 percent of our staff in the last year. We have 10 percent in the pipeline now. We submitted an announced plan that was approved yesterday by congress for fy 23 requesting more positions and more investment in technology. Today, how many positions are not filled if you deal with passports that are funded . I think we have about a 12 percent. Ill have to confirm that. Of about a number. I think we probably have e, i dont know the answer to that. We requested 177 in the plan and i think we probably have about 100 right now. Well have to confirm that. Id like to say mister chair if i might because isee my time is expiring. My staff is mostly complementary about the interactions they havewith those folks dealing with passports. Once there able to make contact , my staff spends an inordinate amount of time on n old and calling back to make that contact. It just seems as though we could do, we should do better by the American People with a service that only government can perform. Thank you. Mister chair, i yield back. I want to thank the gentlemen for requesting this hearing. Several weeks ago this meets some of that expectation but thank you very much. The distinguished gentleman from maryland, Ranking Member of the committee my friend mister raskin will be recognized. Thank you for inrecognizing me. The philosophy in my office is everything we do is about constituent service whether its helping people get their Social Security checks, helping people get their passports and when i go to vote on Something Like expanding americas Infrastructure Investment or the food and drug costs opthat too is in service of our people so that informs everything we do. I agree with my friend from mexico who said as politicians we cant defund the government and rail against the government. We need to make sufficient Resources Available so we can serve our people but im speaking as someone who supports funding the government to get work done. Ive had some problems and i want to start by referring to a constituent who is immunocompromised and applies for disability benefits for ssi in spring of last year and she quickly got a denial for a nonmedical reason. It took more than six months for the Social Security administration to tell her she amply checked the wrong box about obtaining records and had she checked the correct box she was told it would have changed the determination in her case. She waited another six months to get her case assigned to a different examiner and in april she contacted me for help hitting a status update and then got another denial a month later. Shed been unable to work since before the pandemic and now needs of the Social Security administration once again which could take yet anotheryear. Despite being immunocompromised she had to get a parttime job because she was broke. She then caught covid19 on the job. This story about tailing bureaucratic indifference and lethargy and responding to one of our fellow citizens is not unique. My District Office years hundreds of cases like this from different different constituents whove isbeen waiting and do not get a status update from federal agencies like Social Security which is probably not the worst from myexperience. What is causing these delays and what can congress do to help to remove the logjam . Thank you for that o question and with a lot of challenges so thank you for that. A lot of problems leading into the pan related to long wait times and there are retention challenges in our states due to the pandemic. Weve got a good plan in place to reverse course. That allows us to rebuild staffing at both the agency and are state partners. Staffing is probably the number one concern and i mentioned previously weve seen record high inflation in the last three years. Were also working on a comprehensive plan to get a disability backlog this year. I hope you do that sooner rather than later. We dont want a backlog in the plan to deal with the backlog. I appreciate your hard work on this and that if theres anything we can do to help, let us know. Its hard to think of anything more important for passport help, my office is open 1000 cases in the First Six Months which is double what we opened in all of last year and its impossible to manage our constituents expectations cause the office of Passport Services continues to change the processing times and thats not an acceptable way for us to be doing business. Recently the washington ss Passport Agency which is the office closest to my district announced it can no bulonger help with congressional inquiries on behalf of our constituents. Where told only in cases of life or death emergency can we work to schedule our constituents for appointments, but if the constituent is on the phone all day and randomly manages to get through the National Passport Information Center themselves would call representatives can then schedule a local appointment even without a life or death death emergency so miss better, what are the Congressional Offices encountering such radical discrepancies in policy about whether and when and how we can actually helpour constituents get their passports . Thank you sir. Im surprised to hear your you have that feedback. Appreciate it but now that we know we can take it if thats not our policy. Can we contact you . Because i got people working fulltime on this. We would be grateful actually. We work with constituent staff and we would be grateful to get in touch with you. My staff is very nice and theyre very good and we will get in touch. Then we will be able to remove ssome of the obstacles there and i appreciate that and i yield back mister chairman. I think the distinguished so gentleman for taking time to join us for his specific information that would be aimed at helping those organizations. Thank you sir. The gentlewoman from colorado is recognized. Thank you mister chairman. Director levins, as director of the fantasy, how many requests do you have . As of yesterday there were 338,000 unanswered requests of which 265,000 are considered back. How many unanswered requests communities . We serviced 30,000 a week. Generally speaking prior to the pandemic our Customer Service standards we were trying to achieve what can more than 60,000 to many just 10 days or less. I know for fact my Congressional Office has contacted the and prc multiple times to help veterans obtain a copy of their records to verify eligibility and receive their benefits. We saw the backlog of requests i wanted to over 600,000 and this is often too late for a veteran to receive life saving care isbecause bureaucrats arerefusing to show up for work. I see that number is half now but are your employees backat work fulltime in person . Is march 2022. From what i understand the backlog has decreased significantly after the end prc returned to in person work after multiple requests from congress to do exactly that. You said you came back to work in 2022, everybody came back in person. Why did that takes a long . First of all we never closed entirely. We alwaysmade sure we handle the most urgent request which is those involving medical emergencies, homeless shelters. Through the pandemic healthcare conditions improved we were able to bring additional people into the building. We worked with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and health to review our prints, hvac systems but we the time our records were analog, not digital. Weve made a large change. So agencies are transitioning away from paper records but nprc still stores millions of records in two facilities in st. Louis. When a veteran or former civilian employee needs a copy of their records, often to verify these liabilities for benefits, the end prc staff has to pull and file those and process a request so its clearly impossible to do that remotely that would explain why your backlog reached 200,000. Im happy to hear its down i think theres still a lot of work to do because this is impacting i constituents back home. Commissioner poist, how did the ssa transition to remote Customer Service during transport impact citizens who previously relied on in Person Service . Since the early days of the pandemic we recognized challenges as we transitioned from that in Person Service to telephone and Internet Service related to the pandemic. Once we were able to think service we did incur some challenges when our 800 number. Weve since worked on those challenges and we see a stable system today and were hoping to implement our next interaction flexibility project end of the fiscal year. Ssa expedites determinations for applicants who dont have over 200 days to receive the benefits they are entitled to. Ill get operational expertsto analyze that. Iq. Assistant secretary better, if your family traveled and needed their passport, they needed them issued, renewed would you prefer to have your appointment beforeor after the trip was scheduled . Thank you for the question. We publish our Service Standards widely so that people dont have to make that choice. So they can renew their passport for a make their plans. In my district due to the backlog of the department of state constituents and their families do not receive their passports on time and when they requested appointments they were scheduled for after theirtrip. This has caused many families to have to cancel the trip whether thats for pleasure or something serious. This is an issue that comes up in all our offices regularly so we would love to work with you to expedite all of these services that are provided prince tiertoday. Thank you. Mister chairman, i yield. The gentleman from florida mister frost is recognized. Im proud to represent Central Florida in the congress. Central florida is home to orlando, one of the top tourist destinations in the entire country. The Passport Agency to Orlando Florida is in miami. Its about 235 miles away about a four hour drive, an extensive trade ticket to get there so the miami Passport Agency is only open monday through friday 7 am until 2 pm. Im concerned about the people who work monday through friday, the working class people who have a hard time taking off to go travel 4 hours to miami whfor their passport applications. Assistant secretary i understand miami Passport Agency staff are working hard on the constraints they have and the hours that they are open. The problem from my constituents is not always possible to take time off. Are there any solutions that come to mind on the waywe can address this problem . We have 7000 agencies across the United States. Where people can apply in person. Of course people can send them in my mail. When we do our geographic survey, we find that 95 percent of our customers live within 25 miles of an Acceptance Agency and 90 percent of americans live within a five hour drive of a counter. What were doing is ensuring our Service Vendors are widely publicized so people can plan theirtrips. They dont have to go to a Passport Agency. And also to invest in technology so people can have your assets to the ability to apply for an old house. We would love to work with you. If theres more opportunity to increase the tnumber of acceptance facilities so people can apply in person in your district we would love to work with you on that. Im up to work with you on that as well. Yesterday i sent a letter to assistant secretary arnst asking to consider appointments on saturday at that office. Which you commit to taking a look at that letter and exploring that option so working families who have a hard time getting there in the week have an opportunity to see somebody . Are counters across the network each of them have opened some Weekend Hours but i wouldlove to look at that letter. Thank you so much. Thank you to committing to take a look at the weather and how we can accommodate working families on a saturday and looking at how we can counter floridas National District i. My constituents have business trips and honeymoons to get to the we want to make sure were doing everything we can to advocate for that. I was rallying with afge with a lot of our workers. One of my colleagues brought this up the Social Security Administration Currently ranks as one of the worst federal workplaces. Mister poist whats being done to support our workers who are working under severe constraints . So staffing is really the number one reason our employees feel overworked and with the fiscal year appropriation we received i know we are grateful for the increase in fiscal year 2022 weve implemented a aggressive planfor this year. I already mentioned we had 2000 gains so far this fiscal year so is on the way for employees out there. I think that some of the biggest challenge. For the next fiscal year we will collect additional funding to improve field offices and hotlines, d address backlog and reduce the disability claims of the backlog and the capacity is the main root cause of a lot of the problems we are seeing. Which federal body is in charge of funding the Social Security administration . Im not sure i understand your question. Which federal body is in charge of the Social Security administration . What percentage of the funding has actually been authorized . Like 14 of the last 20 yearsweve not received the level of requested funding. Weve really been underfunded for multiple years. There you have it. The reason disability claims are slower than molasses is not just a fact of life, its because republicans have chosen to be on Social Security and the Social Security administration. What was the effect of telework during the pandemic . Telework allowed rfid ministration, when our service transitioned to mostly Telephone Services again our office is now fully open to the public. The public often that some of the criteria with the pandemic. So really its to continue our operation and now that weve fully reentered back in march 2022 again we do have several people working in the agency itself. Managers decide who is eligible or not eligible and we also have the possibility to recall our offices if there is an expected high demand for payers. Thank you, i yield back. Thank you very much. The gentleman from misery is recognized. I want to thank him for sticking around through this entire hearing. Thank you everyone for coming. I appreciate the work you do for the citizensof the United States. Iwould be remiss if i did not say , and its not everyones particular fault. But the frustration our constituents have when they call, they are canceling their Family Vacation or someone is not getting their information timely as a veteran, more people get get into their Social Security office and our offices are fielding those calls so we appreciate the work you do to work with our office staff. I kind of want to go over this round of questions. Icome from the private sector and work in it. Whenever you have somebody call in we have software that manages those tickets. Weve managed because of that we were able to look at particular employee data. G look at a department to take a turn around time. Compare how that is normative compared to other departments. Where able to identify employees that are exceptional and set up surveys and determine not only is an employee fast but people are happy. There are people like talking to that employee. They are pleasant to deal with. Im asking this question because i want to know what lk is your agency doing about the process of collecting information. About productivity of your staff and if we can start with the honorable miss bitter. Weve been up, a very productive staff and we are experiencing frankly not unlike coming out of the pandemic on sectors across the United States. Where our challenges, is we have not enough employees right now you have assisted to address the turnaround time, the satisfaction scores . We keep that for the agency and also for our call center. Do you use that data for individuals in an annual report . Is there merit pay based on theirsuccess . I dont know the answer to that. It is certainly part of the performance review. I dont know specifically how the data is used. Coming from the private sector thats what we do. Your portion of your merit performance for a increase is dependent upon data as opposed to whether or not people that work like you or your manager likes you. Understood. So something to consider. Same question to mister levens. We are a numbers driven hi organization. We have a certificate system so every transaction does get assigned a number to it. All our employees have performance plans. Most jobs fund themselves to qualitative standards as well and thats how they are evaluated. Theres also grants based on your productivity achievements. So you do have defendant programs, thats great. Lets move up, mister typoist same question. Your original question was aboutsurveys. We do extensively surveys. Each year. So youre asking the employees, im asking it if the people that you serve taxpayers exif they are serving them. We also survey our evin, the should be able to login and download all thedocuments. Thank you for the question. We piloted early in the year our online passport renewal system. 565,000 americans renew their passport online. 12,000 filled out the survey saying they were verysatisfied. But it was apilot , were everything we learned before the end of the year. 5 million americans should be able to take advantage of it. As i testified earlier the majority of the facilities are analog or paper records. In the late 1990s and early 2000 the military department began setting up electronic personnel systems on going ci forward based digitize all the paper 90in our building. However thats why we struggle during the pandemic because we didnt have access to electronic records. The va is aggressively denying at a rate faster than ive ever seen in our lifetime. We built technology to enable our Production System access outside of the office. In case theres another event odlike this for even more common whether these people are now being adopted remotely by accessing those electronic records and developed functionality to send them to veterans in a secure manner as well. I yield back. Gentleman yields back his time. Mister kosar you are now recognized. This is an important hearing and i appreciate so many of the members all working to solve challenges for your constituents and want these federal agencies to work. We have stories, veterans records and Social Security benefits. I want to focus on stories about what folks have been dealing with with their passports thinking about how we can move forward. This isnt just about topeople going on trips. Weve heard from a single mother who sacrificed so much so that her daughter could get on a study of a broad trip and that almost all falling apartment we had to do the necessary work so she could get on that trip. A constituents who was a naturalized citizen needing an emergency passport to see her father who was severely ill and we werent able to per get to see him before his passing. These are serious challenges people face in their daily lives and we want people to be responsive so i appreciate the question around how is it we can fix these issues. I want to focus on the state department because we dont have enough time to cover everyone but miss dinner people have brought up search and demand, telework and also the conversation about staffing shortages. Among those three or any other what percentage would you say of what youre facing in the backlog is served and demand for passports, surge and request, how much has to do with telework and how much has to do with staffing shortages atthe agency . Thank you for the question. Just to zoom out a little bit i just want to also emphasize again first of all thanks to your constituent services ¦ we understand your challenges and work hard to publicize our Service Standards people dont fallinto that trap. Our Counter Service is taking 20,000 people a week. We are working very hard to try to pick up what these records demand and record staffing shortages. If i could zoom out and say that there are really two things that we need in order to be able to meet demand of your constituents, number one is fully funding the state department. While hawe are funded everything we do relies on the statedepartment. Hiring, contract. It. All of it is from the state department. When the state department platform is not fully funded its difficult for us to iron the people that we need to make sure we have the technology we need to roll out these systems so thats number one. The second thing that we need something that Congress Gave us was expanded expenditure we can move that the fees that we received two emerging challenges more efficiently. We got the expanded Spending Authority but just on a yeartoyear basis. For us to be able to make the kinds of investments that we want to make to be able to meet the demands of your constituents investments in it and hiring, we need the certainty to be able to strategically plan for the future. To be able to know that we will be able to use those funds in asimple as way as possible. So your sense, what your testimony here is that its really those increasing demand and staffing shortages that have caused that backlog and the president s budget has requested additional funding from but my assumption here is you can confirm if in deed we went and cut back on agencies, that would make thebacklogs worse, not better. It makes it much more difficult for us to meet your constituents demands. According to the secretary the Trump Administration caused the loss of about 1000 jobs at the state department because of the 16 month hiring freeze. Is it secorrect that the trump hiring freeze affected Staffing Levels at the state department. More often mark. We are recovering from a hiring freeze when the pandemic hit. We had to further freeze positions because these were reduced. We came out of the pandemic, 25 percent below where we had been a few years prior. Thank you for your testimony. I appreciate everybody here talking about how we want to help our constituents and clear these backlogs but i want to advocate for us funding these agencies, funding these hardworking staff, making adequate hours, Holding Agencies accountable in respect tothose dollars but we cant break the government and then complain about how the government is broken. That cannot be our strategy moving forward if we want people to be able to get their families. If we want people to access their veterans records and get their disability check we have to be realistic about adequately tapping these grounds, supporting hardworking staff and not having a strategy of breaking the government and then complaining about how government is broken. Thank you so much, i yield back. The distinguished gentleman is recognized. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you for allowing me to be here. I dont know why we always vacuum, you guys are always just supposed to do your job but we appreciate that. And your expert coaching skills mister chairman. Appreciate you on that. Big win. Yes sir. Thank you for being here. Im the 435th most popular member of congress by the time they get to me all the good questions have been asked so the question has already been asked multiple times, act like it was a great thoughtprovoking question and the most incredible question you heard because ill be playing this back for my constituents and id like them to think i was top of my game. First question, i guess this is miss better, is it miss better . Whatever, all right. How do you intend to improve internal medications to help americans get passport status update, provide Payment Information and get problems with their applications like photo applications, many of our constituents have called my office complaining about difficulties getting timely updates on their passport applications so that they cant get through the National Passport or where they went literally for hours. And to be read the same status update Available Online at travel. State. Gov. Thank you for its actually a question that hasnt been asked so thank you very much. I need to thank Madison Heights and jennifer in my office who handled these all the time. We are grateful to them. Weve been working closely with our contractor to increase the capacity and weve seen improvements but we absolutely need to see more. Our call center handles 3. 5 million customer inquiries each year. I think about 1 semillion just in april. What theyve done is theyve tripled the number of phone lines and hired more operators. They expanded their hours. The appointed Weekend Hours. It opened up a third facility to be to handle these calls and have also introduced new technology to improve responsiveness. We also have gotten volunteers together and the search team to support them. You mentioned one thing that were working on which is the passport status check on travel. State. Gov. We are working to improve that. We recognize that is something that is lacking and doesnt give the best information. We anticipate rolling that out i think in the next four months but that will take rusher off. The congressional District Office is being used as buffers for the bureau of affairs because office has opened up 112 escort cases in 2022 from january to june at the same time frame this year the number is recorded for. We tend to think of your constituent Services Staff as partners. And we are rather than buffers we are grateful somebody can talk to our attention challenges that constituent is having. Its important to us because we dont know about it we cant fix it. I would go further, we want to work with our constituent Services Staff. We want to partner on outreach into your district to make sure that peopledont miss trips. They understand what their servicestandards are. When theyre on hold for three hours , i hate to say it but those words are very hollow i guess i should say. When i get an angry constituents and i can tell you it happens a lot if im in a Church Parking lot or going to the store i can generally tell by the tone of their voice its going to be a question going with Something Likethis because it seems to be a hot button right now. And my office the ladies in my office do an excellent job so im a pretty sure our senators pulling them are pushed themoff on us as well. And a lot of times i know theyre dealing with folks that arent even our constituents. So its very troublesome to me that this just keeps happening but youre telling me that there is something to fix this problem . We anticipate our wait times will be back to e prepandemic level by this calendar year and that in through h the late summer and fall that they will decrease incrementally. What measures quickly are being implement it to catch up on the backlog. We have search teams in place across the department of volunteers. We call back retirees. We kept people from their new employees are working on passports. Search teams across the department and across the network and across the world are working to make sure we can stay within our Service Standards, 10 to 13 weeks. And we recognize that we work very hard to supublicize those Service Standards so people can plan their travel. People payattention unfortunately people dont Pay Attention until they have a trip planned. Where working again on counters across the network and see 23,000 people per week. Weve extended those hours so these are for emergency appointments and weve included Weekend Hours as well. Im out of time but if theres ever something we need to be doing on our end i would like to know because this is a hot button across the country. Mister chairman. The gentleman yields back his time. The gentlewoman from dallas texas isrecognized. Thank you mister chairman and much like my colleagues a lot has already been said. A lot i tcan reiterate. This is one of the times you are a little bit more bipartisan in that our constituent work is comprised of a lot of thesame issues. I do want to say that we are having to work overtime because of passports specifically p. I got i directed from my teeth haright before the weekend saying hes appointed to have some work over the weekend because we have 30 task force cases that came in. We are overwhelmed with passports and as has already been said weve been told that when people call the Passport Office they are told to call your congressman. It feels as if we are doing the heavy lifting and i dont want to beat up on you but i want to be real caused this is what oversight is about. While i can appreciate advertising and telling people this is the timeframe that its taking we have emergencies arising as well and because i am in dallas my constituents dont have to travel far because we do have a location there that can help them same day. That has definitely proven to be beneficial to my constituents. I want to say they do appreciate the help. I know they would amlove the letter im going to read from one of my constituents because i want to understand its not just Summer Vacation even though those are biking as well. Its another opportunity. Sean contacted my office randomly. He contacted another elected official cause he needed help with a passport but ultimately he emailed me back and said my passport application had encountered unexpected delays which left me uncertain about receiving it in time for a great academic achievements in my life. An internship to oxford. Oxford university. He was about to miss this because he could not get his passport. Thats not somethingeverybody gets an opportunity to do. Im excited we were able to help him. But i do want you to understand truly the depths of the issues that exist as relates to passports. Im going to move on to Social Security because something that hasnt been highlighted is something said by our colleagues across the isle and i feel as if he was saying the quiet part out loud. He started talking eeabout Social Security and Life Expectancy and talked about the fact that basically those people would die before they would ever get Social Security. Thats. So right now he has a problem with Social Security because right now most people would live to see Social Security so essentially we want to say were offering Social Security on paper but we dont ever want to see a payout for that which is what i got out of that question and that is unfortunate. You have even been fully funded and youre upset about the fact that there is no negotiation is going to take place about cutting the funding even more. They do havet a constituent and we are working on her case right now. Shes the mother of three small children but she reached out to her District Office for help because shes been unable to work since august of 202020 aftr illnesss that affected her muscles and nervous system and shes unable to drive and some days has trouble moving. She still waiting to hear back to be approved by the Social Security administration pitches reached out to various organizations throughout my district to see ifbi they can hp her. This should not be the story of america but i am alarmed when i hear people say the quiet part out loud. It seems like what went on today to do a say hey we are going to fight against you all because thats what we need to do for our constituents but at the end of srt the day that social secuy is in getting through the cases that means we are saving money because we are getting money to people that really need that money. I hope that my colleagues across the aisle take this seriously as we are about to endure a fight on the budget and if we want to prioritize or share constituencies and their stories are the same on both sides of the aisle and the solution ive heard from each of you is funding, funding so you can modernize. Do ipr have that wrong . Stu that is correct for Social Security we need funding to maintain staff and to create investment for our backlog space we are off having the same problem and would sound like we all know what the solution is, fully fund your agency. Thank you for your service to the people of the United States of america and with that i yield back. That the gentlewoman yields back her time and i want to yield myself time. Thank you to each of you who are here. Im sure we expect others to come. Part of the discussion i would like to have is theres a misnomer that i think we get wrong and you are entitled to answer the wayo you do but it s not unusual for reports to be heard in the city about some of the largest buildings that have federal employees almost exclusively its been reported that 17 of employees only 17 at one time or another reported to one of the buildings here in washington d. C. Those are the kinds of things that fuel the questions about when you go back to work and i do recognize her at the state think i do the state department does need to be on the job for issuing a passport. Thats kind of hard to do over the phone but i would just say thats what fuels some of the conversation on our side about not being at work because the reality is some of the companies that own these badges are for that feedback. Some people in the city have complained about and we tell the hearing on at how the city of washington needs to get federal workers back to work because they are havingav problems economically not only in Small Business that they need to do their job. I would like to provide some feedback if i can. There was a conversation that we had ambassador where there is a conversation about on line systems that were tried and evidently successful and now being looked at pending making that an on line system. Good guys, it seems like to me you have 12,000 people that would be enough for the management of that organization to help us out because primarily the people that we run across ii waco texas and across Central Texas have passports. Like they would be awesome candidates for that. A good number of Companies Across this country and i could say American Express and i could say american airlines, they have people who whener you logon hava system thats as may we call you back rather than you waiting on line. May we call you back and sometimes at times its something you can plan for but can we call you back between 47 and 52 minutes. Some of these same Companies Offer an opportunity for you to go on line and actually engage a person to text or word text or what i was called text text. And maybe regular email but it looks like a text streaming and a text back and forth where you can see the conversation and asked the question to get the answer, ask for information and its seemingly to me is a more effective way, not to somebody that is not computer but someone who chooses to do this and it seems like to me there are other tasks which could be expanded from all three of your agencys. The next point if i were to count the south i would have many ive met and its just the back and watching the process. People generally send it in and hear back say 10 weeks later and many of the times and maybe most and maybe ill if it does arrive by fedex or ups the day before they go. Pending that it may have taken three phonecalls or for. There is bound to be a burden off that process that you have if somebody answering the phone. There coulde to me be the identification of the cell phone address that you would have that would be available where you could engage someone in say hi and this is a Passport Office and you presented your passport on may the 25th. Please be advised that the anticipates going to be about seven weeks please do not respond back and as a passport is being worked or maybe put in maybe a week before that you would get back to them because a member of calls and once again this is texas, dont know everything arere repeat questio, are you sure youve got it and is it going to come back . Are they supposed to cancel the flight . They have three children with them. What do they do with the one child . You can imagine the enormous questions that evolve from that. My point is i think if you took into account some things that i think would be marketbased or that others do, i think your satisfaction would go up. I think your call volume would reduce. I think even if you just texted back or call back, i would text, back to each Congressional Office and say please advise your constituents and they would have a better contact. To Say Something in my opinion that needs to be done that would reduce frustration and calls. I have gone past my time. Im sure i will get time again in just a minute but i want to just provide that myself. The gentlewoman from vermont ms. Balint is recognized for its permit thank you mr. Le chair. Thank you all for being here and im sure at this point you are feeling a little wary. I want to start by saying you cant just get blood from a stone and thats what im getting from this hearing. In 2017 President Trump issued an executive order to freeze hiring to reduce the federal workforce. I was one of his very First Options after taking office. Although this order lasted just under three months someed federl agencies had longer hiring freezes. The state department a the hiring freeze lasted for 16 months. Ms. Bitter how Many State Department people does it increase the size of the federal workforce . Thank you for the question. Globally what would happen if absolutely we were recovering when a pandemic hit from those hiring freezes and we instituted more hiring and we were 25 below where we were in 2017 but to give u. S. Cents and im going to get these numbers a little bit wrong but at the beginning of the last administration i think there were probably around 1450 people doing this work and by the time we were able to begin hiring we had turned around 100. Say you said 25 . We read a 25 deficit when we are able to begin hiring again. Okay, significant. How did staff attrition affect the state departments ability just briefly just take them off. There ends im speaking from just Passport Services in addition to having much reduced staff last year we received unprecedentedin demand from services. 22 million passports and cards inind this year we are experieg , it will be probably 15 above that. Weve been able to grow our staff by 10 . Again this accounts for the times that are longer than we would like. Is the staff attrition easily reversible at this point . It takes that whileun the higher. All of thewe people that work fr us, the passport is the most important document that any american will hold and probably the most important document of the world for identity citizenship. Peoplele go through rigorous screening to be able to work for us and even when we begin hirine it does take time to get people on board. I would imagine losing significant staff also impacts Institutional Knowledge would you say quack. Thats fair. You dont just experience that in State Government thats true for any organization. Your. Lose institutional knowlee and you lose key relationships and it impacts the work on a daytoday basis. In any work setting. At this point i ask unanimous consent to insert into the record a new yorkd times article that states quote prison terms terms politicization of normally neutral positions and frequent criticism of his own bureaucracy the morale of employees remained in the prospects that a new generation will even enter Public Service end quote. The mr. Should hiring freeze affects even after was lifted the damage had been done. The Trump Administration tried to shrink federal agencies to costst a mass exodus and knowhw from agencies responsible for helping break the americans providing disability benefits and Social Security income and access to lifesaving care resources for veterans and it goes on and on and as we have heard so much and hearing around passports and visas. Mr. Poist where the most critical issue for Social Security administration gave this is a significant number of people waiting for my taken years for decision on the disability application or appeal. Would you agree with that . If that is correct. People are waiting seven months for initial decision. What is there a cause of your talent is . Like you said when you started we cant get blood blood from a stone. If american suffering because we have starved government have the resources it needs to take care of our constituents and we sit here wringing our hands wondering why we are leading the needs of our constituents. We have to pay for the staff to do this work and we need to make sure the staff have the resources necessary to meet the constituent needs and this is not Rocket Science here. If you start agencies they cant do the work. I yield back. The gentlewoman yields back her time. The gentleman from california mr. Garcias recognize. I want to thank all of you for your service and i know its very hard work and ive had constituents reach out not just an artistic but across the country. Ive been in congress for six months and ive seen the hard work that are federal employees are doing every single day. I was the mayor of long beach, california and it was a difficult time during the pandemic and its important to remember those folks are in government are working in government because they want to help people. First its really important to recognize that yes theres a lot of work to do in all of their departments that we have hardworking people in the Community Working to make their country better place. Sometimes under very difficult budget conditions. I have been very impressed with the level of feedback that we have received from working with a lot of the agencies across the federal government, the passport and state Department Issues which you are all aware of and i will also sayce the response to helping us facilitate some of these difficult cases has been phenomenal with passports. Guess their challenges and we are aware because we have been receiving calls every day but the response of those folks on the ground working with our office has been something great and i want to thank the team thank the teams working on the Passport Team based in l. A. And california. I do want to give a moment a shoutout to brian bravo and my team in the District Office working on the passport issue and all these issues every single day and the countless residents that b are contactings the weekend a success whether its for passports for help with Social Security issues are all the other issues are constituents are facing. I recognize as mayor its all about the budget in ensuring our agencies have enough to do the job that where else to do. The federal government is a completely different scale and its important to talk about cuts and some other agencies and the folks who within them have also been under the last few years we have been trying to clean up with a few sms by former President Donald Trump in the sabotaging efforts to get some of our departments. If you look at the state department which we have been discussing the pet extremists within the Trump Administration constantly attacking the state department pushing back on the Additional Support there as an agency so i personally am proud of the biden harris of and the work they have done to rebuild and supporter agencies and they aree still up more work to do te lot more support is needed but theres been progress that has been made. I want to know an executive executive order partners and Customer Services for those who rely on the services and i want to that and thats delivering excellent equitable and secure federal services and Customer Experience. I commend the president and the Vice President for having administration focused on on people pretty much make a quick note another great example is the National Personnel Records Center part of the National Archives. They have done a Great Program for military ends the surface personnel. Can you summarize for us in this lastminute administrationss investment as well as those from congress that helped address veterans record backlog is . Thank you for your question. Congress pro. Covid relief funds for us which we used to hire additional staff, contractors and prior to the pandemic or workforce did not have funding for laptops and we made Technology Improvements to support electronic records in the va digitizing records and using Electronic Delivery Services for veterans. I think there has been a 50 reduction of backlog so i commend you and your team overall for the work that has happened there and i want to thank all of our employees and their agencies for their hard work and we will continue to vest not just in the departments. Them and look at them as competitive marketplaces and they will be paid fair wages that they deserve. The gentleman yields back his time. I want to thank the witnesses in this committee for their feedback to us that authorized and set up this hearing. I want to thank her witnesses for taking time to include us in their business decisionmaking. I want to thank them for their time to come before the subcommittee. I hope you will take seriously every Single Member who spoke today about the highs and the lows about some of the personal attacks that were made. I think the truth of the matter is that we will continue to work together. All three of your specific agencies have been discussed on a regular basis by members of this body. Much of the discussion are by people who were not here today because they are part of this committee and we didnt bring the men. But that does not take away or diminish the need for us to be engaged in to speak with you and work with you. I believe you will hear the Ranking Member say here in a minute that he wishes to do exactly that so before we close today id like for mr. Nfume to be able to offer his thanks to you also. I think its important before you leave us our guests to say would like to have you back. We like to gain a perspective on the ideas that you heard today because i think each one of you received some bit of information to find out how it can transmit tope our colleagues and respond because i believe both mr. Nfume and i duo this do owe that to this body. We will tell them what we have done and weevil give them best wishes for the information which you provide us back on how we would like to take today searing. I think you mr. Chairman. Several hours so we all got through together and i want to thank you again as i said before for communing this hearing and i want to thank members of this body who thought it was important enough to raise the issue. I really want to thank the three witnesses who have been here for this set for several hours. Secretary Deputy Commissioner poist the information you shared regarding Thee State Department ncrcpu and Social Security i hoe will go a long way at providing direction for all of usga and fr others with these issues. Allow me if i might just too in my own mind summarize what im walking away with here. Its clear to me that policies such as the hiring freeze that we have heard about over and over again continue to some extent in this whole issue of a Customer Service crisis. We have fewer people and you tend to do less work and if you are doing more work you dont have those people for long because they get burned out. My colleague said something about getting blood out of a iraq. We have to recognize that workers have limits. They will do all that they can do and should do and we will all hold them to that. Because we have an evergrowing populationl that is just boomig we have to at some point realize we cannot allocate the previous amount of resources to a mountain thats growing crying out for help. We know that staff attrition, no matter how much we cannot be quickly reversed. It takes a minute as ive heard some of these daytoday to allocate resources to deal with Social Security backups and the backups of the state department whether its training ahe new person to be a passport adjudicator for disability claims examiner. While we are looking at attrition and while we certainly believe we ought to find a way to find what you are doing the real truth of the matter as it will take us a little bit of time to dig out at this hole. I think i heard you say earlier we wont be accountable until we get back to prepandemic levels. Thats the reality and its on us to build a sure what their colleagues. Theres no magic wand just a lot of good determined effort i hope that supporting our federal workforce. Ii do know the Biden Harris Administration democrats are committed to assuring the agency that serves the public are being funded by investing in them and the workers and technologies all of which hopefully at the end of the day will put customers first and providing the resources that they need and the agencies need for what we should call optimal Staffing Levels and to acquire updated technology to improve how the government can deliver those services to our constituents have to be prior to number one. I said earlier the National Archives is a good example of how leadership in congress together prayer isis improving government servicesli by championing investment from my modernization done to eliminate the veterans records request backlog and have not done by the end of the year. I know thats all of this country that we hear this and hopefully there is real help on the way. The other thing for me is that ive never considered telework to be the problem. Ive always considered it to be a bridge to get to where we want to be in because of the pandemic which we talked about there were delays and backlogs that brought about the need for telework. We continued to work in the United States congress for well over a year so i understand its not ideal but it doesnt necessarily equate to poor quality if and when its done right and overseen in the sort of way that makes sense. Teleworking isnt solution for avoiding increased backlogs and fostering continuity of work. We know those backlogs as was said earlier our medical records and attrition and probably three or four other things that have not come up today. Not to mention the Little Things that break up continuity at work like emergencies and inclimate whether and other things. Theres a lot to be taken into consideration im going to certainly continue to urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to follow the path that we are on. It is a path of bipartisanship and hopefully trying to find a way to do with an issue that affects all of us and it does not mean any member of this congress cannot express themselves but at the end of the day we are searching for because most people arent of the writer colette the left and most are inthon the middle and o govern effectively we have to make sure that everyone has heard but at the end of the day there is a real effort to alleviate these problems are constituents are crying out. You heard over and over for members of congress about how they are approaching Committee Hearings and my constituents feel like they are. The agencies dont hear them and they are put on hold. Thats a painful thing we dont have the ability to correct that yourself. If everybody is a member of congress we wouldnt have the problem but we should not be the ones that have to rattle the cages for the people who need it the most. Mr. Chairman im going to cope collude their and i would ask ngunanimous consent that two statements be entered into the record, statement from the socialcl security administratio. It is the aflcio American Federation of Government Employees that developed this and i have a statement about about the Department Stay passport backlog from the National Federation of federal employees that represent 110,000 individuals and as i said once on the floor federal workers are everywhere. Theyg are just in washington d. C. Thank you very much mr. Chairman i guilt back and i want to thank thera witnesses. Mr. Nfume i want to thank you very much. Well haveel our own sayings but at the end of the day i 16 years vigorously in the system and we had a saying that by and large was either works or it doesnt work. If its working you are okay. If itss not working you got to continue to do something different. And i think today you had an opportunity to receive feedback and i think its important for you to listen to us and we wait to hear back from you. I would like to gauge each of you individually from the feedback and what you heard from us today they came from both sides of the aisle. With l that said and without objection all members will have five legislative days within to submit materials and to submit additional questions for the witnesses for their response. I see no other requests for time sofa without objection the subcommittee stands adjourned. Thank age you very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]