Telephone Wage Reporting

Background

Over the course of their eligibility, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients provide wage statements to us to ensure that they are still receiving the correct payment amount.  As mentioned in the major causes section of the SSI background page, incorrect or out-of-date reports have led to many improper payments.  In an effort to make this process easier for both the recipient and the agency, we created the SSI Automated Telephone Wage Reporting (SSITWR) System. 

In the past, recipients needed to mail, fax, or hand-deliver their monthly wage reports to one of our field offices.  Through the SSITWR program, those recipients can now call a dedicated agency telephone number to report their monthly wages via a voice-recognition system.  Once we have the report, the information automatically updates our SSI claims system.

For FYs 2010 and 2011, we established goals to achieve a targeted number of monthly reporters* participating in the SSITWR:  20,000 by the end of FY 2010 and 28,000 by the end of FY 2011.  As reflected in the chart above, we exceeded both goals.  In FY 2012, our goal is to increase the monthly use of SSITWR by an additional 10 percent above the usage in September 2011, and as indicated in the chart, we had already attained this goal as of February 2012.  Our front-line employees will continue to recruit new monthly reporters and promote the use of this tool for wage reporting.  For FY 2013, our goal is to increase the monthly use of SSITWR by an additional 5 percent above the usage in September 2012. 

We are seeking new ways to promote SSITWR.  In FY 2012, we plan to conduct targeted outreach to encourage representative payees of working SSI recipients to report wages using SSITWR.

*Approximately, 600,000 SSI recipients have wages.

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