Social Security Administration Girds For ChangesSocial Security Administration Girds For Changes

As President Bush and several members of his administration crisscross the country to promote proposed changes to the Social Security system, the agency itself is preparing for changing business processes.

For the past year, the Social Security Administration's Inspector General's Office has been working with tech service-provider Booz Allen Hamilton to build a case-management system that better reflects how agency employees work. The office uses the case-management system to organize work related to investigating recoveries, restitution, fines, settlements, and judgments authorized by the agency.

In the past, case-management systems were developed monolithically and without integration capabilities, says John Druitt, a senior Booz Allen associate. The key to efficiency and flexibility, Booz Allen determined, was for the inspector general's office to study where processes were working well and where work was piling up, and to be able to quickly repurpose systems to accommodate new processes.

To accomplish this last objective, Booz Allen chose e-Work business-process-management software from Metastorm Inc. "With Metastorm, we have an ability to include the user in a way we haven't before," Druitt says. Although Druitt says he isn't able to provide specifics about the work his firm did for the Social Security Administration, e-Work is generally used to design how work should flow through an organization, then map the way different applications must interact to accommodate that workflow. This can include database, customer-relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and supply-chain applications.

As an example, Druitt points to the process of hiring a new employee. Although this would seem to be primarily a function for a human-resources package, the hiring process also includes scheduling interviews, reserving office or cubicle space, ordering computers and office supplies, and integrating new employee information with a financials system.

The firm is now considering Metastorm's new Universal Process Integrator toolkit, introduced in late March, for the Social Security Administration. UPO advances e-Work a step further by taking the work that a series of applications perform and automating it into a seamless process. These applications can be built based upon .Net, Java, or Web services. "UPO will allow people to quickly and efficiently string together processes," Druitt says.

Such efficiency should help the Social Security Administration, which faces the challenge of improving the disability claims process and preparing for an increasing workload as the baby-boom generation nears retirement. The agency is currently responsible for paying around $42 billion monthly in benefits to more than 50 million people.

In the federal government, many agencies see IT as a way for them to better keep up with their missions, Druitt says. In the past, if a business line within an federal agency wanted to automate a process, it could take six months to figure out how to do that and another six months to implement, Druitt says, adding, "You shouldn't have to break or rebuild your system just because you have to handle work in a different way."