Justification for Non-substantive Change

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes for

the SSI Monthly Wage Reporting (Telephone)

20 CFR 416.701-732

OMB No. 0960-0715

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes to the Collection or Resubmission of the Collection within One Year of OMB Approval

Background

We are requesting to add a new recruitment methodology to the existing information collection for the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Monthly Wage Reporting (Telephone) initiative (also known as SSI Telephone Wage Reporting (SSITWR)). In the OMB clearance package approved in July 2010, we described recruiting participants for this initiative as taking place during the course of normal contact with SSA, during an initial claim, pre-effectuation review contact, redetermination, or other post-eligibility contact. We are now pursuing a new recruitment process that includes mailing an outreach letter and the previously approved SSITWR participant training package to representative payees for certain SSI recipients (including SSI recipients who concurrently receive Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance benefits).

Change

At this time, we do not expect the new recruiting method to increase the overall public burden attributable to this information collection; therefore, we are not requesting an adjustment to the response or burden information.

We mail the recruitment letter to the representative payees of working SSI recipients who have unverified wages on their SSI record and for whom we have not otherwise precluded from reporting via telephone due to systems limitations or case characteristics. The recruitment letter instructs the representative payee to call the SSITWR system to report monthly wages of the working SSI recipient.

In November 2010, we did a one-time mailing of the recruitment letter to approximately 1,000 representative payees and, based on the results from that pilot, we are looking to expand this recruitment methodology by mailing a recruitment letter to about 12,000 additional representative payees. In the future, we intend to mail the letters on an ad hoc basis.

Justification:

Expanding this recruitment methodology is one of the targets cited in SSA’s “Fiscal Year 11 Performance and Accountability Report.” SSA processes wage amounts reported via SSITWR in time to prevent wage-related improper payments, and we process them without requiring the use of our resources at the local level. As a result, we continue to investigate different ways to expand the volume of wage reports processed via SSITWR.

We do not expect to increase the public reporting burden. We will closely monitor the number of responses, and if we determine that the number of responses will exceed our current authority, we will ask for another update to the burden information.