QUESTION
What are the reasons behind the processing delays for SCRIE applications, and how is the budget supporting improvements?
5:44:22
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89 sec
The Department of Finance now processes SCRIE applications within 4 days, achieving improvements through hiring, automation, and a change in income definition.
- A backlog previously drove up average processing times artificially.
- Response times for both initial and renewal applications have been significantly reduced to 4 days as of February.
- Strategies for improvement include hiring in the property exemptions administration unit and implementing automation.
- Amending the income definition has decreased the frequency of requests for additional income information, facilitating faster processing.
Selvena N. Brooks-Powers
5:44:22
A lot of my colleagues including myself have some serious concerns about the increases and processing times for a screen injury applicants.
5:44:31
Just wanting to get perspective in terms of what is causing the lag in these processing times, how the Department of Finance seeks to address this internally, and how does this budget help ensure the Department of Finance has what it needs to address this present issue?
Preston Niblack
5:44:50
I appreciate the question.
5:44:51
And I think we are doing much better than what was reflected in the preliminary management report, which Obviously, it only covers through October.
5:45:01
As I mentioned earlier, we had a kind of a case backlog where we held cases open that really drove up the average time.
5:45:07
For processing kind of artificially.
5:45:10
Now as of February, we are at 4 days or less to respond to both initial and renewal applications.
5:45:18
So I think we are as Assistant Commissioner Snyder said, we are actively hiring to fill vacancies in the in the property exemptions administration unit.
5:45:31
And we are also looking at some automation in there.
5:45:37
I think the change in the income definition has been very helpful in that we have to we don't have to go back as often to people to request that they give us additional information about their income.
5:45:47
So that's actually helped, I think, a lot, speed things up recently.