Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided details of its telephone survey on the outreach activities for the Supplemental Security Income program carried out by field offices of the Social Security Administration (SSA).

The GAO survey disclosed that: (1) SSA field offices implemented a wide range of outreach activities, but there was no clear consensus on which activity was the most effective; (2) managers generally acknowledged the need to conduct outreach and believed that they were doing enough; (3) about 40 percent of the managers believed that although outreach was needed for non-English-speaking people, a lack of staff prevented adequate outreach; and (4) nearly half of the managers said that they spent 10 hours or less on outreach each month.