Case USA58: Why a Federal Social Security Office Used Case Management Screens to Ignore Enterprise Architecture Gaps

Sunil Dutt Jha
Aug 11
2 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Overview: This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US federal programs have mislabeled front-end visibility as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”

In social security operations, a recurring pattern is treating redesigned case management screens as proof of enterprise transformation. Claims processors could view a claimant’s status in one place, and response templates sped up correspondence — yet the enterprise structure linking policy updates, eligibility logic, payments, appeals, and fraud detection was never modeled.

P1–P6 Insight Preview:

P1 (Strategy): The screen redesign was positioned as a modernization milestone, but it wasn’t tied to an architecture-led plan for improving timeliness, accuracy, or policy adaptability.

P2 (Process): Claim intake and review steps were made visually simpler, but escalation, appeals, and cross-department workflows remained unclear.

P3 (System): Systems behind the screens — eligibility, payments, fraud checks — still operated with different data definitions and rules engines.

P4 (Component): UI components improved usability, but underlying processing components weren’t harmonized.

P5 (Implementation): Sprints focused on front-end enhancements, leaving back-end integration untouched.

P6 (Operations): Business ops benefited from easier screen navigation, but tech ops handled a steady stream of mismatched transactions and error corrections; both faced slow resolution for complex cases.

Role Disconnects:

CEO/Agency Commissioner: “Our staff now sees the full claimant picture instantly” — but decisions are still delayed by disconnected rules.
CIO: “The new screens are a game changer” — yet they’re powered by the same fragmented logic as before.
Sales Head (Public Engagement): “Citizens appreciate the transparency” — but still wait weeks for resolutions.
Chief EA: “We refreshed the interface, not the enterprise architecture”
Head of Claims Processing: “I can navigate a case faster, but I still have to manually pull data from three other systems to make a decision”