Page 50 - profiles in civil service program 2018 version

the Office of Management and Budget in formulating the Social Security
Administration's portion of the President's annual budget.

I am Betty Lou James and I served in the Social Security Administration for
30 years. I started working as a Claims Authorizer. I had to make non-

medical decisions on Title II claims such as whether people were entitled to
benefits based on the rules and regulations. I had to decide the proper
representative payee. I calculated the proper payments on cases that were

done manually. Many of the cases had reduced benefits due to workers’
compensation and age. We had to decide in "scrambled earnings" cases, the
earnings that belong to each person involved and their Social Security
Number. We had to request information from the district offices, claimants,

and lawyers. As a Claims Authorizer Instructor, I was required to teach
students all the information in our manual. Knowing that using the wrong
formula could cause the claimant undue hardship, we ensured that we

calculated a claimant's benefits accurately. As a Disability Examiner, I had to
make medical decisions on whether the person was disabled. In some areas I
reviewed the disability determination Services Examiners to see if they had
made the right decision to allow the claimant or deny the claimant. In all of

these jobs, it was very important to handle claims quickly and at the same
time have accuracy. The workloads were high. I worked very hard to get as
much out as I could. We were doing two to three people's jobs, but we did our

best to serve the public.

I am Ted Jensen and I served in the Social Security Administration (SSA) for

36 years. I am a Past President and currently serve as the National Division
Coordinator for the Maryland Federation of the National Active and Retired
Federal Employees Association (NARFE). At SSA I negotiated a

reimbursable agreement between SSA and Health and Human Services, Office
of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) and helped OCSE develop the Federal
Parent Locator System (FPLS). SSA does daily data processing for the FPLS.
Verifying Social Security Numbers is a key component of the FPLS system,

and FPLS feedback of mismatched SSNs to employers improves SSA’s wage
reporting operations, resulting in a secure, cost effective system with benefits
for both agencies. The FPLS helps States locate spouses not paying child

support, enabling the collection of past due payments and saving taxpayers
millions in welfare payments to the custodial parents. I also managed the SSA
side of a joint project with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We

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