Ticket to Work: Free Support for Young Adults in Transition
Posted: May 22, 2012
Social Security’s Ticket to Work program supports career development for people with disabilities who are preparing to work. The Ticket program is free and voluntary and offers beneficiaries with disabilities access to employment.
To find out more about our Ticket to Work Program and available Work Incentives through accessible learning opportunities, watch our webcast, “Ticket to Work: Free Support Services for Young Adults in Transition, “available beginning May 23rd, 2012 at 3:00 p.m. EST. Register here for this free web event.
Social Security Releases Popular Baby Names for 2011
Posted: May 16, 2012
On Monday, May 14, 2012, Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, announced the top baby names for 2011 on the Today show. Social Security started compiling baby name lists in 1997, and the agency’s website offers lists of baby names for each year since 1880. Social Security is America’s source for most popular baby names because parents supply this information to the agency when applying for a child’s Social Security number at the time of the child’s birth. Check the Baby Names page on May 18th for the 2011 list of most popular names by State.
The top baby names announcement drives a lot of traffic to the Social Security website and helps to promote other important information about Social Security programs and services, including the Extra Help Program and the new online Social Security statement.
Social Security Statement Now Available Online
Posted: May 4, 2012
Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, announced an online version of the Social Security Statement is now available at www.socialsecurity.gov. The new online Statement provides eligible workers with transparent, secure and convenient access to their Social Security earnings and benefit information.
“Our new online Social Security Statement is simple, easy-to-use and provides people with estimates they can use to plan for their retirement,” Commissioner Astrue said. “The online Statement also provides estimates for disability and survivors benefits, making the
Statement an important financial planning tool. People should get in the habit of checking their online Statement each year, around their birthday, for example.”
The online Statement helps with financial planning and provides workers a convenient way to determine whether their earnings are accurately posted to their Social Security records. This feature is important because Social Security benefits are based on average earnings over a person’s lifetime. If the earnings information is not accurate, the person may not receive all the benefits to which he or she is entitled.
The online Statement also provides the opportunity to save or print the personalized
Statement for financial planning discussions with family or a financial planner.
Providing the online Statement through our new, robust verification process is one of the first milestones in our Open Government flagship initiative to make Social Security a more open agency.
For more information about the new online
Statement, please go to
www.socialsecurity.gov/mystatement.
SSA and DoD Collaborate on Initiative for Wounded Warriors Applying for Disability Benefits
Posted: May 1, 2012
The Social Security Administration and the Department of Defense (DoD) are working together to improve access to disability benefits for the nation’s Wounded Warriors, service members, veterans, and their dependents. A new nationwide project enables Social Security disability case processing sites to receive military medical records from multiple DoD facilities with a single request to a centralized DoD site. As of today, this initiative is in its first phase of nationwide expansion.
“Receiving electronic medical records for our Wounded Warriors and other military personnel will significantly shorten the time it takes to make a disability decision,” said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. “This new process will improve the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of the disability program.”
The new DoD-Social Security collaboration consolidates requests for medical records from Social Security to a single location that has access to DoD records in a central electronic repository. Among other advantages, this will yield faster delivery of DoD medical records to Social Security, and reduce the time it takes to make a medical decision on a disability claim.
A key project milestone in Social Security’s recently published Open Government Plan 2.0, this collaborative effort is the first step towards the long-term goal of a fully automated solution of improving medical information sharing using health information technology and the Nationwide Health Information Network Exchange.
For more information on Social Security’s use of health IT, visit www.socialsecurity.gov/hit.
SSA Recognized for FOIA Success
Posted: April 26, 2012
On March 12, the Department of Justice kicked off Sunshine Week with a celebration marking, among other things, the third anniversary of the release of Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines.
Social Security’s Deputy Commissioner, Carolyn W. Colvin, was among representatives from four federal agencies to receive recognition and speak at this commemoration. Ms. Colvin highlighted Social Security’s own Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) successes over the last year. Other representatives hailed from the Federal Communications Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of the Interior.
In his remarks, the Attorney General recognized that Sunshine Week presents the government with the opportunity to realize the promise of FOIA, fulfilling what President Obama has called “a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government.”
For more information about Social Security’s FOIA activities, visit the agency’s FOIA web page. Information about the activities of all federal agencies, is available in agency Annual FOIA Reports and Chief FOIA Officer Reports, on the Office IP website and FOIA.gov.
Left to right: Jasson Seiden, David Lu, Melanie Ann Pustay (DOJ), Tony West (DOJ), Stacy Rodgers, Carolyn Colvin, Eric Holder (DOJ), Mona Finch, Dawn Wiggins, Patricia Bellamy, Dan Callahan, Anthony Tookes
