Establishment of an Advocates Office in the Social Security Administration's office of Adjudication in Metropolitan Detroit

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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Abstract

Personal interactions between clients and street-level bureaucrats are significant in explaining why street-level bureaucrats behave as they do. Not all bureaucracies that apply program rules to individuals, however, engage face-to-face with their clientele. As more intake procedures are automated, such “one-on-one” encounters decrease. The paper generates and tests hypotheses about frontline bureaucratic decision making in the Social Security program, by applying bounded rationality theory. The findings show that eligibility decisions by street-level bureaucrats are affected by their adherence to subsets of agency goals and perceptions of others in the governance system. How quickly they make decisions also has an impact. There is no evidence that the way in which bureaucrats evaluate clients explains their decisions when they lack face-to-face contact.

Table of Content

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT2

DECLARATION3

Background of the study5

Problem Statement7

Purpose of the Study7

Rationale and theoretical frame work7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW8

Social Security in US8

History and origins8

Amendments10

Goals and principles11

Benefits and payroll taxes12

Pay-as-you-go financing13

Bureaucratic Networks14

Service marketing and customer relations16

Service Capacity as Service Quality17

Capacity as Strategic Advantage19

Interpreting Capacity Constraints21

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)22

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY23

Data Collection23

Variables23

Data analysis and synthesis23

Reliability and validity24

Scope and limitations24

References26

Appendix30

Survey Questions32

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Access to social welfare programs depends not only on the eligibility rules that Congress adopts but also on how bureaucrats apply those rules to individual cases. Often, advocates who determine eligibility for government programs are referred to as “street-level advocates.” One central characteristic of street-level bureaucracies is the face-to-face interactions between advocates and clients. The advancement of information technology has removed this characteristic, however, from many bureaucracies, and some bureaucracies that process people have never had this characteristic. Despite this, most research and theory building on bureaucracies that apply services directly to clients has focused on bureaucracies in which advocates and clients physically interact. Even in the absence of face-to-face interaction, the advocates who apply program rules to individuals should still play a role in influencing policy implementation because program rules can often be interpreted in different ways, and individuals often do not neatly fit into eligibility criteria (AARP, 2007).

Background of the study

In addition to being a good case study to examine the determinants of eligibility determination, studying the Social Security Administration is important in its own right. Social Security Disability is one of the largest welfare programs in the United States. In 2005, the Social Security Administration administered $128 billion in cash benefits to 12.8 million people through the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Furthermore, these programs are extremely important for the disabled ...