The Social Security Administration's Human Factors Project

Abstract

Over the years at SSA it has not been the custom to view people and automated systems as integral parts of a single overall SSA process. Traditionally, systems have been designed by systems analysts who, typically, know little about SSA programs or jobs and who have defined systems requirements in their own terms. Systems development costs were never assessed in terms of their impact on the productivity of people. As a result, operating procedures, workflow, and even the structure of jobs in the non-ADP component of the SSA process have more and more come to be designed around the rigid requirements and limitations of automation. Throughout SSA, specialized jobs have been created to handle the complexities of interacting directly with inflexible SSA systems.