Dear SSA Employees,
The union learned that management is going ask all employees to sign an "Acknowledgement Statement" that you know and understand everything required of you with regard to PII. The cover email from Linda Mc Mahon states that "..each employee should be asked to sign the "Acknowledgement Statement". If you sign, you are indicating that you fully and completely understand all the information there is on PII policy. Protecting PII is extremely important, the problem is that if you sign the "Statement" and accidentally violate the policy or misunderstand the policy acting in good faith just doing your job, management will to use your signature on the "Acknowledgment Statement" as proof that you fully knew and understood the policy and acted knowingly, willfully, and with full knowledge.
HOW MANY DAYS OF PAY WILL YOU BET THAT YOU FULLY AND COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND SSA'S PII POLICIES?
QUESTION: Can you
take an EAS write back home that management has given you?
Can you take it home if you blot out the first name
and first two sequences of the SSN? The Region IX Security Officer says
"yes" - that is proper sanitization, but conflicting information exists
on many EAS write back sheets, indicating 'no". The EAS Write back
sheets say "Notice; THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE
INFORMATION (PII). The document may not be removed from SSA-secured
space, either electronically or in paper form, until you have ensured
that all of
the PII on the document is illegible/unreadable."
So the answer is yes and no. The EAS write back says you must ensure "all of the PII on the document is illegible/unreadable", that would mean all name and SSN data. So if you want to rebut some write backs at home and follow the Security Officer's directive sent to all Region IX employees (for example) and leave the last name of the claimant and the last 4 of the SSN, and take the write back home, you have followed regional policy but violated another policy of unknown origin - and management could fire you - read their own instructions.
WHAT IS YOUR REGION'S POLICY ON THE ACCEPTABLE SANITIZATION OF PII PRIOR TO REMOVAL FROM THE OFFICE?
There are many other instances where the policies are unclear, conflicting, or may not have been communicated to you. Are you convinced that you have all the information you need to know about PII and fully understand it all? Willing to bet your job?
The union advises employees to request all instructions, guidance, policies, regulations, and all other information they are expected to know to be complying with SSA's PII policies. DO NOT sign anything until you have read every document the agency has on PII and fully understand it. IT APPEARS YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO SIGN. The only reason management wants you to sign the "Acknowledgement Statement" is so they can use it to discipline you. We support all of management's efforts to educate employees on PII, but do not support any effort to have you sign a statement that can be used to suspend or fire you.
If management calls you into a meeting to discuss the PII policies or to sign the "Acknowledgement Statement" tell management this is a formal discussion and the union has the right to attend. Sign at your own peril. From what the Deputy Commissioner of Operations says, they may ask you to sign but this is not an order. If you have questions or concerns, contact your AFGE union representative.
Charles R. Estudillo, 1st Vice President Council 220
Legally, since employee's are merely asked to sign (this is the wording from Linda Mc Mahon, Deputy Commissioner of Operations), one may legally and properly not sign. Anytime one is ordered to sign something that they aren't required to sign or don't want to sign, they may sign noting "ordered to sign" which means they have signed under duress or coercion. Management cannot properly order employees to sign that they fully understand something if they do not fully understand it. This would not be a proper order. In fact, signing if you do not understand would be falsifying a document.