Keyboard Replaces Pen at Social Security Office

It’s a scene familiar to anyone who has been in a bank, stock brokerage or travel agency recently: Customers sit across from staff members who handle entire transactions on desk-top computer terminals.

But this scene is taking place in a Social Security office, and the agency’s leader says it is the first step toward faster, better service.

The agency has begun taking benefit applications directly on terminals at its main downtown office here and in York, Pa. The equipment will be installed in 18 more offices from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Wenatchee, Wash., by late autumn, and in all 1,350 Social Security offices within three years, Acting Commissioner Martha McSteen said.

The agency, under fire a few years ago from congressional investigators for being too timid in joining the computer revolution, embarked on a $500-million five-year modernization program in 1982.

McSteen said the public is already seeing the changes. It now takes 10 days, down from three weeks, to issue new Social Security cards, she said, and there are fewer disruptions at headquarters in suburban Woodlawn, where giant computers keep track of the earnings of 123 million Americans and pay benefits to 37 million others.

“There has been a real major change in the way Social Security does business, and we’re still in the process of vastly improving our record-keeping process,” McSteen said.

The downtown office is in an imposing brick warehouse, where Social Security records were stored from 1936 to 1960. Today, it is outfitted with modular furniture and 43 terminals. There are 45 people on the staff.

The manager, Velma Seabrooks, a 28-year veteran, said, “I wanted this to happen long before now. They told me this kind of system was coming 20 years ago.”

“We were surprised that the people who came in to file claims really felt more comfortable with the terminal . . . than perhaps we did as employees using it for the first time,” McSteen said.

So far, she said, there has been no sign of “fear or resentment or distrust from the public” about the fact that “the most confidential information about (them) is going into a computer somewhere. They seem to be very accustomed to that sort of thing.”

Wanda Jones, a claims representative, said the staff members were leery about the switch to terminals, but that they soon adjusted. Now she sings the system’s praises, saying, “It really makes (work) a lot easier. No more trips to the computer room.”

It also will eventually eliminate the jobs of data review technicians, who used to take written applications, encode them on computer forms and send them to Social Security’s master computers.

The Reagan Administration wants to eliminate 17,000 of the 75,000 jobs at Social Security by 1990 through attrition, believing that modernization should mean fewer workers.

Although Social Security prides itself on an accuracy rate exceeding 99% for payment of retirement benefits, McSteen said that there is a chance for error each time a clerk must re-transcribe someone’s earnings or other data.

Under the old system, 25 days were needed for a local office to retrieve a person’s earnings record from Social Security main computers. “Now, we’re getting earnings records in 10 or 11 days,” Jones said.

“The earnings reports are requested right away now instead of giving them to the different clerks,” said Shirley Lawrence, a data review technician. “Sometimes we did it that day, and sometimes we did it the next day. Now, they’re requested even while the applicant is sitting there.” The agency plans to find other work for the technicians.

The terminals flash in red whenever a claims representative makes an error such as entering a Social Security number incorrectly.