Net Gains

The site's monthly eNews newsletter, covering a variety of Social Security-related issues, has garnered about 160,000 subscribers since its March 2000 debut and is the 10th most highly subscribed of all list serves, according to rankings by L-Soft.com, which tracks such services. About 10,000 new subscribers sign up each month.

Other online services added over the last several years include the option of getting personal earnings reports and benefit statements by mail. A service through which citizens could get their reports online ended just one month after it began in 1997, because of concerns that the agency hadn't done enough to protect privacy. People also can place online requests for replacement Medicare cards, benefit verification letters and other documents. The site has become a third main point of contact between the agency and the public, along with the field offices and the customer service phone line.

"The focus of the Web site really has changed over time. We've moved more from being an information delivery vehicle-although we still are one-to an interactive service delivery vehicle," says Jim Borland, SSA's director of electronic communications, who oversees Web development for the agency's Internet and intranet sites.

The most notable addition, launched in November 2000, allows users to file applications for Social Security retirement benefits online. The agency is taking about 17,500 applications online a month-about 5 percent of all applications-and expects that figure to grow as the Internet penetration in the overall population increases, users grow more comfortable with making transactions online and as the more Internet-savvy population ages.

SSA hopes eventually to be able to take applications for all its benefit programs over the Internet as well as to handle most post-entitlement transactions there, such as changes of address and changes in names. "We're happy with the participation rates we're getting on the Internet now, but we recognize that this is an investment for the future. The true benefits that we're going to get from the Internet application are going to be seen when it scales up, when we get to 10, 15 or even to 20 percent," says Borland.

How fast the online side of SSA's business will grow and how much of a benefit that growth will yield in staff savings is unknown, however. Applying for a Social Security benefit is a major lifetime event that many people might prefer to handle in person, no matter how comfortable they are in the online environment, Borland says. Even online applications need follow-up; applicants must print out the forms and take or mail them to SSA along with documents such as birth or marriage certificates.

Further, Social Security benefits can be complicated and applicants often are better served by having an experienced agency employee guide them through the process, says Witold Skwierczynksi, president of the National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals of the American Federation of Government Employees. "There are certain things that [agency employees] do, even with the simplest retirement claim, that often have an effect on the benefit rate. Ninety-nine percent of the time those errors are corrected to the benefit of the wage earner," he says.

"If you don't go through that process, you're going to create a guaranteed situation where a lot of people get the wrong benefit amount. I don't know how you get around that without a trained interviewer being able to not only review the application and fill in the gaps, but ask certain questions that might not be obvious to the individual filing the claim. Certainly you can save work years by having the claimants themselves do their own work, but you're looking at problems down the road," he says.

Says Borland, "Is the online application a completely automated process? No. We don't claim that it is." Problems such as differences in earning records have to be resolved at some point regardless of whether the claimant applies in person or over the Internet, he notes. "Even if a customer chooses to come into an office to apply for benefits or chooses to call the 800 number, what we're finding is that more and more customers are going to the Internet first, to get some of their general questions answered," he adds. "That helps them feel more comfortable with the process, but it helps us too, because the customers are coming in better prepared," he says.

"What we can say at this point is that the Internet is handling a certain workload. That time can be spent on other work we have to do, especially in the field offices," he says. "Although we're very happy to have customers on the Web site now that are using our benefit application, we're also building it for people who are going to retire in the future. We're going to be looking at a wave of retirees. We have to figure out a way to deal with that. The Internet is one way of dealing with that."