Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the accuracy of information provided to the public through the Social Security Administration's (SSA) toll-free telephone service.
GAO found that: (1) SSA telephone service study results were unreliable, since its study guidelines did not establish clear criteria for evaluating response accuracy and SSA did not record the telephone conversations sampled; (2) it disagreed with SSA ratings of response accuracy on 35 percent of the 260 issues evaluated during 188 jointly monitored phone calls; (3) in six different situations, SSA reviewers inconsistently rated the responses of their teleservice representatives; (4) SSA has redesigned its accuracy study to eliminate the confusion caused by assessing both accuracy and completeness and will require the reviewers to complete each assessment before monitoring the next call; (5) SSA has not fully disclosed to Congress the results of its nationwide accuracy study, and the data it has disclosed have been incomplete and misleading; and (6) SSA lacked a methodology for assessing the accuracy of phone service provided by local field offices, although Congress ordered it to publish local offices' phone numbers.
