Social Security saves money by offering services on its website

Monday, Oct. 16, 2000 | 10:21 a.m.

The one-out-of-three people in Nevada who receive retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration -- and all of those who will receive benefits in the future -- should find it a lot easier to get information on those benefits.

Social Security administrators were in Las Vegas on Friday to pump up the new services, including online services the agency now offers.

"We're trying to be very responsive to our customers," said Deputy Commissioner William Halter, the agency's No. 2 man.

Halter said people have been asking for electronic services, so the agency is offering them. But the agency also benefits -- it costs a lot less to handle the material online with the Internet than it does face-to-face or over the phone.

A new monthly online newsletter from the agency, for example, already has 100,000 subscribers. Mailing it would cost millions, but doing it over the Internet costs $25,000 a year.

"This is a much more efficient and much more cost effective way to communicate," Halter said.

Not that the old ways are going away, he said.

"As we move to doing more things electronically, we are not going to shut down our traditional methods of service delivery," Halter said.

For example, the agency through this year is sending out "the largest personalized mass mailing in history" -- 125 million workers over the age of 25 will receive a statement on how much they would receive if they retired now, or years down the road.

But the fastest growing segment of the Internet-using population is among older people, and the services now offered have been popular, he said.

In 1994 the Social Security website had 26,000 visitors. So far this year, it has had 16 million, Halter said.

Some of the services include:

* A benefits planner to help with retirement planning. It will give users a ballpark figure of how much they would expect to get back from Social Security in addition to pensions or savings.

* An earnings limit calculator letting workers compute the effect of earnings on their retirement benefits.

* Disability and survivor planners on available benefits and the factors that can affect them.

* People can also apply for benefits or get a new Social Security card online, or subscribe to a monthly electronic newsletter from the agency.

Social Security is particularly important to people in Nevada, said Linda S. McMahon, regional commissioner.

McMahon said one-third of the state's residents receive Social Security retirement benefits, compared to about one out of nine nationally.

The administrators said the agency is expanding with an annual 10 percent increase in the number of people receiving benefits statewide, a factor of the "phenomenal growth" in the state population.

Local offices "are struggling with dealing with all the necessary work," McMahon said.

Halter and McMahon also spoke to continuing questions about the viability of the retirement and disability program.

Halter said the program, as it is now, should be fiscally "strong and solid" through 2037. Proposals by the Clinton administration, which would have to be passed by Congress, would keep it solvent through 2054, he said.

The year 2054 is important because that is when the wave of retirees from the "baby boom" that ended in the 1960s is expected to end. The oldest of the boomers would be 90 in 2054, Halter said.