Justification for the Non-Substantive Changes - 0960-0229

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes for Form SSA-8000

Application For Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

Title XVI

20 CFR 416.105-120, 416.200-416.203, 416.210, 416.302-305, 416.330-350

OMB No. 0960-0229

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes to the Collection

Background:

In response to the IT Modernization initiative, we are adding a new modality, Person Information (PI), for collecting marriage information for the SSI application. PI is a database that collects and stores information from previous SSA records.

PI will store marriage information from previous SSA records to provide technicians assistance resolving conflicting or missing information from a claimant. In addition, we re‑ordered and re-worded the marriage questions for efficiency and clarity. 

PI collects some additional marriage information that we do not currently need in the SSI application. However, future IT Modernization projects will incorporate these PI screens as well, including all Social Security Benefit applications. While some of these questions are not required in SSI claims path, and will be only informational when pulled from other applications, they will be necessary for other applications, and we will provide them under the appropriate OMB number to show these questions are part of an OMB‑approved information collection request. PI screens provide an asterisk when the SSI question is required. Those questions, which appear without an asterisk, are not required to answer for an SSI application.

Changes to the Collection Instrument:

• Change #1: Upon OMB’s approval, we will implement the new PI Marriage Pages into the SSI Claims system application. The PI Marriage Pages will replace the current SSI Claims System marriage screen. We will be replacing the following questions and pop up screens:

• We will replace the questions, “Married anytime since mm/dd/yyyy” and “Terminated marriages since mm/dd/yyyy” in SSI Claims System (see SSI Marriage Screens marriage (Screen 2.1 in SSI Marriage Screen document) with “Are you or have you ever been married?” (Screen 6 of the PI document). When the user selects the “yes” radio button, the user will select “Add Marriage” which then navigates the user to additional PI marriage screens.

• We will replace the Marriage Pop up window in SSI Claims System (see SSI Marriage Screen document #2.3 ) with PI Marriage screen (see #15 in the Person Information Marriage Screen document).

• We will replace the question, “Living together since mm/dd/yyyy” (see SSI Marriage Screen document #2.3) with a yes/no radio button in the SSI Marriages screen (see SSI Marriage Screen document #3.2) with “Select marriage if couple has lived together since mm/dd/yyyy” and a checkbox.

• We will provide marriage information in Person Information gathered from previous SSA records by adding the “Get Spouse Information on Record” button. When selected, this provides the user to select marriage information already on record. (See Person Information Screen Package – Page 23 #18)

Justification #1: SSA will use the Person Information Marriage Information screens to centralize marriage information. This should reduce keystrokes, and produce applications that are more accurate by using marriage data from the official record.

• Change #2: We are adding the following questions to the PI screens which are not specific to the SSI application:

  • Place of Marriage – USA or US territory/International

  • Marriage Type or Non-marital Legal Relationship Information (Civil Union; Common-Law Marriage; Deemed Marriage; Domestic Partnership; Indian Tribal or Custom Marriage; Marriage by clergy or public official)

  • Special Relationships (apply only for Title II) – 216B1; 216F1; 202C2; 216K; 216C2/G2

  • Proof of Marriage (check box)

  • Confidential Information

    • Marriage Details (Marriage Date; Place of Marriage; Marriage City; Marriage State; Marriage Type or NMLR-Civil Union)

    • Marriage Ended Details (Place Marriage Ended; Civil Marriage Ended; State Marriage Ended)

Justification #2: As mentioned above, we are also adding these questions as they are part of our PI screens, and will be used to collect this information for other ICRs as needed (with appropriate mention that these questions are approved under 0960-0229 and 0960-0444). We will not require them to answer the above questions as part of this ICR.

• Change #3: We are moving the following questions from the SSI Claims System to the new PI screens:

  • Spouse’s Social Security Number (SSN)

  • Confidential Information:

    • General Information (First, Middle, and Last Name; Suffix; Birth Date; Death Date)

    • Marriage Ended Yes/No; Marriage End Date; Reason Marriage Ended

Justification #3: We are moving these questions from the SSI Claims System to the PI screens since other ICRs will use PI to collect this information in the future. We placed an asterisk next to these questions to indicate that these questions are required when completing an SSI claim.

We will implement the PI screens upon OMB’s approval. Because we are just replacing the SSI Claims System screens with the PI screens, there is no change in the current reporting burden.

Resubmission of the Collection within One Year of OMB Approval and Future Plans

We received OMB approval for a Change Request to include the new Preliminary Claims System (PCS) screens under this OMB number on 2/26/19. At the time we submitted the previous Change Request, we were unaware that we would also need to update the marriage screens in the SSI applications, which is why we were unable to include this change with the PCS screen revision. We are sending these now to update the screens with the new marriage screens as soon as possible.

As per our previous submission for the PCS screens, we mentioned we will also need to update the PCS screens in the near future; however, those screens are not, yet, ready for us to include in this Change Request, which is why we are not including them here. We will submit a new Change Request for the updated PCS screens once we have them ready for submission.