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Post by montyburns on Feb 11, 2017 14:30:47 GMT -5
I did misunderstand you. I have to disagree with your justification for why it might be more relevant for ALJs to be close to the office. I've wet signed 2 cases in the last year so that's not a rationale. Also they can't force a judge to take a docket if another judge calls in sick, whether we are in the office or at telework. And I don't know any judges who are facing loss of telework who have much motivation to help out management by taking on even more cases when they feel they are already maxed out due to ever increasing case sizes and ever decreasing staff ratios. I agree. As a long time HOCAlJ, I can't think of any situation in the real world where I would have to call a judge back to the office while she was working at home. Pixie I stand corrected - there's no justification for the 2 hour rule for anyone who teleworks. |
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Post by johnthornton on Feb 14, 2017 19:37:00 GMT -5
NHC judges are being threatened now with both loss of telework and transfers to hearing offices if they fail to meet the 50 per month scheduling quota or the 500 annual dispositions goal. See the following memo from the Acting NHC Chief ALJ: MEMORANDUM DATE: February 8, 2017 TO: All National Hearing Center ALJs FROM: Kathleen Scully-Hayes, ACALJ RE: Performance Expectations for NHC ALJs OCALJ is in the process of evaluating whether there should be changes made throughout the hearings operation. One area under evaluation is the National Hearing Center model. Because of the efficiencies built into the model, NHC management Judges are expected to hold more hearings and issue more decisions than their counterparts in regular hearing offices. While that expectation was borne out during the first few years the NHCs were in existence, recently, our numbers have decreased. Although some of that decrease is due to participation by a number of NHC judges in the various fraud initiatives, Puerto Rico backlog, training cadres, and interview panels, it does not account for the overall decrease in production across all NHCs. Therefore, OCALJ is examining all aspects of the model, including whether some judges currently assigned to NHCs, who are regularly not meeting minimum production guidelines, should be reassigned to regular hearing offices as non-management ALJs. As NHC management judges, you are provided with special resources to process your workload. Each NHC judge should be scheduling a minimum of 50 hearings per month, whether they telework or not, and they should be on pace to reach a minimum of 500 dispositions. If you are not meeting these minimum expectations, your HCCALJ will contact you to discuss any challenges you might be experiencing and whether you should continue in your placement as an NHC management judge. As you know, there are more than one million people waiting for a disability decision. We need everyone to work as efficiently as possible, and we need to use our limited resources to our best advantage. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Believed to be an actual reply memo but not confirmed. MEMORANDUM DATE: February 10, 2017 TO: ACALJ Kathleen Scully-Hayes CC: NHC Judges FROM: _______________, Federal Manager Judges Association RE: ACALJ Scully-Hayes Memorandum of February 8, 2017, to NHC ALJs on Performance Expectations After receiving input from fellow NHC ALJs: 1. NHC judges continue to outperform hearing offices nation-wide. In FY16, 35% of NHC ALJs were on pace, compared to 27% of the entire nation (including the NHC judges). Thus far, FY17 shows 36% of NHC ALJs on pace, compared to only 17% of all offices. This demonstrates a couple of things. One is that NHC ALJs, using this important metric, are outshining other judges by a significant margin. The gap would be much wider if NHC judges were compared to regular ODAR offices. A second point is that the “minimum 500 dispositions” makes no sense if only around 30% of judges are meeting that goal. A basic management principle is that goals be reasonably attainable. That has not been the case with the minimum 500 metric for years. The agency should take a serious look at this metric. The only study that has been conducted in this area was by the AALJ and that showed the “500-700” goal was unrealistic, as borne out by the above compliance percentages. A US House of Representatives committee recommended that this goal be abandoned. ODAR reports that the fewest remands are for those who complete 355 to 435 dispositions per year. These are productive numbers that result in quality decisions.
2. Mention in the memorandum was made of fraud investigations and the Puerto Rico backlog affecting production, which is factually accurate. Other things should also be considered. The abrupt imposition of telework for NHC staff, without any gradual implementation, has been chaotic. There have been days when only about ten percent of the staff is physically present. Obtaining assistance for clerical chores that arise is problematic. Production and quality have been adversely affected in case pulling, decision writing, and scheduling. The judges are aware that the impetus of upper management was to accede to the demands of staff unions in order to boost employee satisfaction survey ratings. Performance as a goal was absent from that effort. (Staff who telework three days a week face no threat to their tenure in an office, without regard to productivity.) There are no numerical standards in place for staff or attorneys.
The NCAC experiment’s effect on productivity cannot be ignored. Many judges are reluctant to send decisions to these far-flung locales populated by writers unknown to the judges. Despite the best efforts of management to provide more training and working hard on this initiative, quality varies and the lack of face-to-face communication makes the process difficult.
Another significant factor affecting performance is all the criticism coming out of Quality Review. For years, judges have been instructed to focus on quality. The major problem is that QR has gone beyond this mandate. Dozens of analysts and attorneys have been hired to “investigate” judges for “bias.” These unwarranted intrusions into the decision-making process, without any bias complaint being filed, cause judges to focus more time on each case, not just for quality reasons, but also to avoid false bias investigations. Over 1,000 ALJs have been subjected to thousands of investigations by these bureaucrats. Can anyone imagine over 1,000 district court judges being subjected to this kind of bureaucratic morass? The overall decline in nationwide ALJ productivity goes hand-in-hand with the increase in these baseless “investigations.” (At the same time, remands declined from 21% of appeals court reviews in 2011 to only 13% in 2015. Whether this is due to more AC time and emphasis on “investigations,” or the AC responding to upper management emphasis on declining remands, or the vagaries of AC decisions, is not clear.)
The danger here is that upper management gives the appearance of going back to the bad old days of “paying down the backlog,” such as encouraging judges with 1,000 or more dispositions per year who pay 98% of the cases.
3. The threat to transfer judges, against their will, from the NHC to regular offices, has occasioned the most discussion and comment.
This, of course, would be an adverse action and would be subject to challenges under OPM rules and regulations and other applicable civil service law.
Such a course of action would also violate the AALJ Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which expressly provides that NHC ALJs can only transfer from the wait list. (The legitimacy of this clause has not yet been determined after challenge. This clause was particularly galling after judges were encouraged and recruited to go to the NHC, in part, with the explicit promise of being on the management transfer list. In any event, this clause has now come back to haunt the agency as transfers of NHC ALJs, at this point, have to comply with the CBA.) Unaddressed is how such a drastic procedure would be implemented. Who would decide? What criteria would be used? Who would decide what the transferee office would be? Would moving expenses be paid? How would just transferring a non-productive judge help the agency? How would morale at the transferee office be affected? At the NHC office?
Legalities aside, this threat against “All National Hearing Center ALJs” is demoralizing and disheartening.
4. A significant number of HOCALJs used to do over 600 dispositions per year. Now, HOCALJs are only expected to do a fraction of that. With 120 or so offices, that is about 50,000 fewer dispositions per year, or an addition of 250,000 or so to the backlog over the last 5 or 6 years. This is an area where performance could be fruitfully examined.
5. The memo says NHC judges are expected to hold more hearings and issue more decisions than other judges. This was not a condition of hiring NHC judges. The stated purpose was to conduct video hearings around the country to help the most overburdened offices. This has been the case and it has been done successfully by the NHC judges. NHC judges are thus regularly dealing with a disproportionate load of aged cases with the accompanying voluminous exhibits in the file and often the need for pre- and post-hearing development. At times we hear cases in offices where all the cases of claimants over age 50 (often easier to dispose of as more are paid under the grids) are screened out by the local offices. We have been unable to get anyone to meaningfully address this issue. All this adversely affects productivity and more than offsets “the efficiencies built into the model.”
This is illustrated by the proposed legislation in Congress that 25% of all new ALJs go the NHC because the NHC provides “invaluable flexibility and support to address the hearings backlog.” This is the key to the NHC and is the reason Congress has confidence in the NHC. Threats of involuntary transfers and elimination of telework will be detrimental to attracting top ALJs to the NHC.
6. Initially NHC attorneys were hired for two-year temporary contracts that could be renewed. Unsuitable attorneys were not retained. That is no longer the case.
7. The memo was correct in that all judges, teleworking or not, should be held to the same standard. This is in accordance with the Telework Enhancement Act.
Management by threat of adverse consequences, with punishment the sole outcome, is not productive. Major decisions would be readily accepted if those affected were in some form or fashion included in the decision-making process. Communication is the key to a successful relationship, as taught at NHC judge training.
All in all, NHC judges should be commended for their high level of professionalism while dealing with challenging cases and being nation leaders in productivity. If there are a few judges scheduling only 15 or so hearings a month, those few can be dealt with individually, without taking all the stellar ALJs to task. On the key metric of Dispositions Per ALJ Per Day, the NHC again exceeded the nationwide average in FY16, as has been typical. We have every right to be proud of our NHC judges.
1 Misplaced Priorities: How the Social Security Administration Sacrificed Quality for Quantity in the Disability Determination Process, Attachment F, Staff Report, H. Comm. On Oversight and Gov’t Reform, 113th Cong., page 50 (December 18, 2014).
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Post by Pixie on Feb 14, 2017 22:06:18 GMT -5
And so it begins.
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Post by judgymcjudgypants on Feb 15, 2017 9:26:22 GMT -5
So, what is the real life impact of these bias investigations? Why would an investigation be initiated without a complaint? I am not understanding (the "logic," allegedly).
J
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Post by nylawyer on Feb 15, 2017 9:28:40 GMT -5
Don't paragraphs 1 and 4 contradict each other- urging that the best standard for quality would be about 400 dispos per year, but then saying a good way to get rid of the backlog would be to have the HOCALJ's doing 600?
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Post by prescient on Feb 15, 2017 10:17:53 GMT -5
Another significant factor affecting performance is all the criticism coming out of Quality Review. For years, judges have been instructed to focus on quality. The major problem is that QR has gone beyond this mandate. Dozens of analysts and attorneys have been hired to “investigate” judges for “bias.” These unwarranted intrusions into the decision-making process, without any bias complaint being filed, cause judges to focus more time on each case, not just for quality reasons, but also to avoid false bias investigations. Over 1,000 ALJs have been subjected to thousands of investigations by these bureaucrats. Can anyone imagine over 1,000 district court judges being subjected to this kind of bureaucratic morass? The overall decline in nationwide ALJ productivity goes hand-in-hand with the increase in these baseless “investigations.” (At the same time, remands declined from 21% of appeals court reviews in 2011 to only 13% in 2015. Whether this is due to more AC time and emphasis on “investigations,” or the AC responding to upper management emphasis on declining remands, or the vagaries of AC decisions, is not clear.) The danger here is that upper management gives the appearance of going back to the bad old days of “paying down the backlog,” such as encouraging judges with 1,000 or more dispositions per year who pay 98% of the cases. This sounds like paranoia and/or fake news. I am not aware of any aspect of Quality Review that entails investigating judges for bias. |
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Post by Pixie on Feb 15, 2017 10:20:40 GMT -5
So, what is the real life impact of these bias investigations? Why would an investigation be initiated without a complaint? I am not understanding (the "logic," allegedly). J Because this is the SSA. |
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Post by nylawyer on Feb 15, 2017 10:36:06 GMT -5
So, what is the real life impact of these bias investigations? Why would an investigation be initiated without a complaint? I am not understanding (the "logic," allegedly). J In theory (I have no idea if this is true) the agency might have to initiate its own bias investigations of someone who was biased in favor of some group or person; so for example if an ALJ always issued a favorable decision in cases involving a particular rep, there likely wouldnt be a complaint. |
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Post by judgymcjudgypants on Feb 15, 2017 10:42:35 GMT -5
So, there is *some* alleged rational basis for the complaint/investigation, beyond a disgruntled, unsuccessful litigant? Pixie: that's why I said "allegedly," it's a wonderfully useful word.  J |
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Ranse
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Post by Ranse on Feb 15, 2017 10:52:47 GMT -5
This sounds like paranoia and/or fake news. I am not aware of any aspect of Quality Review that entails investigating judges for bias. My understanding is that the QR attorneys / others can take it upon themselves to report potential bias issues. Someone else completes the investigation. My hearing office is kind of off the grid, so I don't know much more. |
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Post by Pixie on Feb 15, 2017 10:59:20 GMT -5
So, there is *some* alleged rational basis for the complaint/investigation, beyond a disgruntled, unsuccessful litigant? Pixie: that's why I said "allegedly," it's a wonderfully useful word. J It is my understanding that anytime a complaint is made, it is looked into. I have no personal knowledge of this as I have never (knock on wood) had a complaint made against me. |
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Post by zebra51 on Feb 15, 2017 11:03:29 GMT -5
6. Initially NHC attorneys were hired for two-year temporary contracts that could be renewed. Unsuitable attorneys were not retained. That is no longer the case. I hope all those NHC attorney's won their MSPB cases. They were hired as temporary appointments not temporary contracts. It is very much against civil service law to use a two-year term appointment as an extended probation period. |
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Post by thankful1 on Mar 9, 2017 23:35:31 GMT -5
Reviving the thread as it looks like telework for those under 50 is gone. At least it is in my office.
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Post by eyre44 on Mar 10, 2017 7:35:57 GMT -5
Reviving the thread as it looks like telework for those under 50 is gone. At least it is in my office. Ours too. Judges are also receiving directives to schedule 50 even if they don't telework. Everyone is demoralized, even the ones doing 50. |
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Post by bartleby on Mar 10, 2017 9:27:31 GMT -5
As Pixie said, "Because this is the SSA.". And one must remember, SSA is ASS backwards... But I digress
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Post by ncatty007 on Mar 10, 2017 17:48:50 GMT -5
I have about 35 in UNWR, with a whopping 4 in various writing statuses, and 1 EDIT. And although I've been told to give hearing dates through September, which I've done, I have a total of 8 cases scheduled in June for the 8 days, 6/day I've made available. Yeah, playing hardball over 50 is a great way to move things forward. :-|
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Post by redsox1 on Mar 10, 2017 21:20:55 GMT -5
So, there is *some* alleged rational basis for the complaint/investigation, beyond a disgruntled, unsuccessful litigant? Pixie: that's why I said "allegedly," it's a wonderfully useful word. J It is my understanding that anytime a complaint is made, it is looked into. I have no personal knowledge of this as I have never (knock on wood) had a complaint made against me. I believe that all "complaints" are investigated by the division of quality  DQS - not sure what the S stands for. Everything is logged and investigated. I had a complaint that arose from an appeal in which the claimant stated, in her appeal letter, that I lied about her in the decision. It was dismissed but it was disconcerting. Particularly because when you are editing 500 cases a year it is possible that some misstatements will slip by. |
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Post by hamster on Mar 10, 2017 23:42:44 GMT -5
Reviving the thread as it looks like telework for those under 50 is gone. At least it is in my office. Ours too. Judges are also receiving directives to schedule 50 even if they don't telework. Everyone is demoralized, even the ones doing 50. Writing, of course, in my personal capacity. I haven't received a directive yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's coming down the pike. However, I do not intend to schedule 50 per month. It's not that I'm ornery, although I am. It's that the files where I am are too big for me to read 50, hold hearings for 50, mull over those 50, write 50 sets of instructions, proofread 50 drafts (which are great if prepared in house, and range from great to execrable if prepared elsewhere), and sign those 50. Sure, a couple of cases might fall by the wayside, but we're still talking a lot of time. My HOCALJ doesn't let us do "rocket rockets," so these are all regular hearings. Speaking for myself, I cannot schedule 50 hearings a month. These hearings are too important to our claimants to only pay lip service to quality and due process. I also intend to use my annual leave and go on vacation. "Good morning, Mr. Doe. Please excuse the stopwatch, but you have just 34 seconds to present your case. Ready, set, GO!" I don't think so. So it's not just that I won't schedule 50. I can't schedule 50. Is there a directive in my future? Bring it on, fellas! I'm ready to rumble. YMMV. |
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gargoyle
Full Member
http://www.eyehook.com/index.html
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Post by gargoyle on Mar 11, 2017 7:24:01 GMT -5
Ours too. Judges are also receiving directives to schedule 50 even if they don't telework. Everyone is demoralized, even the ones doing 50. Writing, of course, in my personal capacity. I haven't received a directive yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's coming down the pike. However, I do not intend to schedule 50 per month. It's not that I'm ornery, although I am. It's that the files where I am are too big for me to read 50, hold hearings for 50, mull over those 50, write 50 sets of instructions, proofread 50 drafts (which are great if prepared in house, and range from great to execrable if prepared elsewhere), and sign those 50. Sure, a couple of cases might fall by the wayside, but we're still talking a lot of time. My HOCALJ doesn't let us do "rocket rockets," so these are all regular hearings. Speaking for myself, I cannot schedule 50 hearings a month. These hearings are too important to our claimants to only pay lip service to quality and due process. I also intend to use my annual leave and go on vacation. "Good morning, Mr. Doe. Please excuse the stopwatch, but you have just 34 seconds to present your case. Ready, set, GO!" I don't think so. So it's not just that I won't schedule 50. I can't schedule 50. Is there a directive in my future? Bring it on, fellas! I'm ready to rumble. YMMV. It took six years, but it seems like ODAR is more than happy to "pay down the backlog" once again. Quality be damned. |
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Post by hopefalj on Mar 11, 2017 10:07:46 GMT -5
Writing, of course, in my personal capacity. I haven't received a directive yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's coming down the pike. However, I do not intend to schedule 50 per month. It's not that I'm ornery, although I am. It's that the files where I am are too big for me to read 50, hold hearings for 50, mull over those 50, write 50 sets of instructions, proofread 50 drafts (which are great if prepared in house, and range from great to execrable if prepared elsewhere), and sign those 50. Sure, a couple of cases might fall by the wayside, but we're still talking a lot of time. My HOCALJ doesn't let us do "rocket rockets," so these are all regular hearings. Speaking for myself, I cannot schedule 50 hearings a month. These hearings are too important to our claimants to only pay lip service to quality and due process. I also intend to use my annual leave and go on vacation. "Good morning, Mr. Doe. Please excuse the stopwatch, but you have just 34 seconds to present your case. Ready, set, GO!" I don't think so. So it's not just that I won't schedule 50. I can't schedule 50. Is there a directive in my future? Bring it on, fellas! I'm ready to rumble. YMMV. It took six years, but it seems like ODAR is more than happy to "pay down the backlog" once again. Quality be damned. I won't pay it down. I'll just assume everyone else involved in the process is doing their job and only worry about mine. I won't care about my affirmation rate. I've proven I have no issues there when I don't have to schedule 600 per year. Like I've said before, that would actually be quite liberating. Check the severe impairments, paragraph B criteria, RFC, and VE testimony, save, and sign. 5 minutes per edit. And when the pendulum in the agency swings back towards quality in a few years because my affirmation rate plummets from 98+% to 60ish-percent and instead of hearing almost all new claims in my 550+ hearings per year I'm being buried by 100 or more remands every year, so be it. I'll adjust back and scale back my hearings. Edit: on the other side, with the pressure that writers are under, if my instructions don't identify every severe impairment or opinion (which, believe it or not, does happen from time to time) and the writer doesn't take the time to add them or find them, I won't begrudge them that, either. |
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DQS - not sure what the S stands for. Everything is logged and investigated. I had a complaint that arose from an appeal in which the claimant stated, in her appeal letter, that I lied about her in the decision. It was dismissed but it was disconcerting. Particularly because when you are editing 500 cases a year it is possible that some misstatements will slip by. 
