Justification for the Non-Substantive Change for 0960-0782 (Signature Requirement Removal)

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes for

Enterprise Scheduling System (ESS)

OMB No. 0960-0828

Requested Action

We are requesting approval of this extremely urgent Change Request by COB Thursday, 7/10/25.

Background

Members of the public currently use the Enterprise Scheduling System (ESS) to schedule an enumeration appointment with SSA. Recently, we received urgent feedback from the general public and from the advocacy groups regarding the need for faster and more efficient service. However, to ensure we are able to better serve the public effectively, we suggest the public set up appointments with us to ensure we can meet their needs, as if we have too many people walk into offices without appointments, we cannot guarantee we can serve them that day.

ESS currently offers customers the following services:

• Appointment scheduling

• Electronic communication

• Workload evaluation/planning/management

• Research

• Regulatory Mandated/Compliance

• General purpose statistics

ESS facilitates both customer self-scheduling and technician scheduling, allowing SSA to collect essential information from customers, including their name, Social Security number, zip code, telephone number, and email address. Additionally, customers have the option to consent to electronic messaging or to opt out, as well as specify their preferred method of communication (email or text), language preference, preferred service office, and appointment day and time preferences. SSA uses this information to schedule in-office, phone, or video appointments.

When SSA implemented the Enterprise Scheduling System (ESS) in 2022 for use in scheduling enumeration appointments, we did so with the expectation that we would include more appointment types under ESS as we continue to expand its use for appointment scheduling purposes.

Due to the dire need for better and more efficient scheduling options (which the public requested), we are increasing our scheduling choices through ESS, expanding the use of the current system to include Post‑Entitlement (PE) requests – see below).

To that end, we are planning to extend the current ESS functionality to enable customers and technicians to: (1) schedule enumeration appointments for new or replacement Social Security cards; (2) reschedule or cancel PE actions, such as changing a Representative Payee, processing non-receipt of payment, updating an SSI record, or submitting evidence, and (3) including functionality to allow technicians the ability to schedule, reschedule or cancel PE appointments on behalf of customers.

While we still expect to expand the use of ESS further in the future, this expansion will help respondents self-schedule and allow more ease to SSA technicians who need to manage two of the highest volume workloads SSA processes. Most importantly, it will help reduce the lifecycle of a request and enable us to better serve the public much faster.

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes to the Collection

We are making the following changes to the ESS Technician Screens:

• Change #1: We are adding a phone appointment contact type as an option.

Justification #1: We are making this change to increase the functionality for ESS and to collect another contact method.

We are making the following changes to the ESS Internet screens for self‑scheduling:

• Change #2: We are including a short online questionnaire for self-schedulers to use before they can access the time slots in ESS to schedule their appointments.

Justification #2: This short questionnaire will help the system determine the type of appointment needed and will allow the system to offer it in the body of ESS once the system moves the respondent to the scheduling screens. The option for PE appointment will be a static option which the respondents can choose to keep.

• Change #3: We are revising the screens to collect the following, editable data for self‑schedulers: name, Social Security number, and zip code.

Justification #3: We already collect this information through the technician screens; however, we are allowing respondents to edit these screens as needed when they complete the screens themselves. This will allow us an easier way to track and contact the respondents who self-schedule.

• Change #4: For self-schedulers, we are adding a field with PE appointment type, which is not editable.

Justification #4: As mentioned above, the system will use the advanced questionnaire to determine the type of appointment necessary and will pre-fill that in ESS for the respondent.

Estimates of Public Reporting Burden

We are adjusting the reporting burden to this information collection because we expect a slight burden increase due to the new questionnaire we are adding to ESS to allow the respondent to choose the type of appointment.

See chart below with the updated figures:

Modality of Completion	Number of Respondents	Frequency of Response	Average Burden Per Response (minutes)	Estimated Total Annual Burden (hours)	Average Theoretical Hourly Cost Amount (dollars)*	Average Wait Time for Teleservice Centers (minutes) **	Total Annual Opportunity Cost (dollars) ***
ESS - Internet	3,000,000	1	5	250,000	$22.98*		$5,745,000***
ESS - Technician	150,000	1	3	7,500	$22.98*	22**	$1,436,250***
Totals	3,150,000			257,500			$7,181,250***

* We based this figure by averaging both the average DI payments based on SSA's current FY 2025 data (https://www.ssa.gov/legislation/2024FactSheet.pdf), and the average U.S. worker’s hourly wages, as reported by Bureau of Labor Statistics data (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics).

** We based this figure by averaging the average FY 2025 wait times for field offices and teleservice centers, based on SSA’s current management information data.

*** This figure does not represent actual costs that SSA is imposing on recipients of Social Security payments to complete this application; rather, these are theoretical opportunity costs for the additional time respondents will spend to complete the application. There is no actual charge to respondents to complete the application.

SSA will implement these revisions upon OMB’s approval. In addition, we are also in the process of completing a full OMB approval for these revisions to allow for public comment. We published a 60-day comment period Federal Register Notice on May 21, 2025, at 90 FR 21817, and thus far, we have received no public comments. We expect to publish the 30-day comment period Notice by July 22, 2025, after which we will submit the full information collection request to OMB for approval. In the meantime, we are requesting approval of this Change Request by COB Thursday, 7/10/25.