Non-Substatntive Change 0960-0665

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes for SSA‑711

Request for Deceased Individual’s Social Security Record

OMB No. 0960-0665

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes to the Collection or Resubmission of the Collection within One Year of OMB Approval

• Change #1: The Social Security Administration (SSA) is moving from FOIAonline to FOIAXpress to administer the agency’s FOIA program. We are, therefore, replacing all references to “FOIAonline” in the Supporting Statement to read “online FOIA portal.”

Justification #1: FOIAonline is a shared service maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). SSA uses FOIAonline to administer the FOIA (i.e., the solution serves as our FOIA case management solution). The EPA is decommissioning FOIAonline at the end of fiscal year 2023; therefore, SSA must transition to a new FOIA case management solution before the decommission date to avoid disruption to the agency’s FOIA program administration. Due to the decommissioning of FOIAonline, we are revising the reference to the portal in our documentation to the more generic “online FOIA portal” to remove references to a specific portal in case we need to transition to a new portal again in the future. The agency plans to transition to FOIAXpress by the end of June 2023, or the first week of July 2023 (no later than end of July 2023).

FOIAXpress is a commercial-off-the-shelf web-based FOIA request tracking, management, and reporting software application for managing the entire lifecycle of FOIA requests and appeals. The contractor, Opexus, owns and maintains FOIAXpress. SSA will use FOIAXpress to log, track, and process FOIA requests and appeals, as well as requests for consultations and referrals, and Privacy Act requests. SSA will also use FOIAXpress to store the response to the request, including the storage of any copies of records we gathered in response to any request, and any related appeals or court litigation tied to a FOIA request/appeal. Finally, SSA will use FOIAXpress to track FOIA processing statistics, fees, and generate various reports.

SSA’s Office of Privacy and Disclosure centrally processes FOIA with a subset of requests (i.e., requests for copies of decedents’ original Application for a Social Security Card (SS-5) and Numident record) processed by the Office of Central Operations, Division of Earnings and Business Services (DEBS). Additional SSA users include attorneys within the Office of General Law and FOIA Coordinators located within the agency’s deputy commissioner components. SSA will determine agency users’ access within FOIAXpress based on the user’s user group and associated permissions. We expect approximately 250 employees across the agency will have access to FOIAXpress.

Members of the public will use FOIAXpress’ Public Access link (PAL) to submit electronic FOIA requests to SSA. The public’s use of PAL is not the only way they may submit FOIA requests to SSA. SSA will continue to allow requesters to submit FOIA requests via email to FOIA.Public.Liaison@ssa.gov; by fax to 410-966-0869; or by mail to Office of Privacy and Disclosure, Freedom of Information Act, Social Security Administration, G-401 WHR, 6401 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21235.

Note: We will also make the same revision to our documentation for references to our online FOIA portal in other information collection requests. We will revise those as they come up again for renewal.