ICARUS Updates - May 21st 2005
Summarizing ICARUS's Insights of This week
1 .PD being processed floats back and forth based upon the dates of cases with responses to 45-day letter in the queue. Right now, cases have been drawn from 7/02 with regularity. Obviously, this can regress with additional responses to cases with prior PD. Also, as of 5/20, RIR queue was just over 17K
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2. the email address status@dal.dflc.us is bona fide. The Dallas BEC contractor is the recipient of the emails to this address, although responses are pretty much limited to confirmation of case receipt. Unfortunately, due to the traffic received, they've begun limiting responses to inquiries only on cases actually being worked by the Dallas office. Am unaware of a similar site for Philly
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3. Incidents such as these are dwindling off as processing moves forward. If a case is closed due to "lack of response" a letter is automatically generated notifying the agent/employer of case closure. If it can be shown that this was in error (never receiving letters, able to provide proof of delivery, etc.) The case is re-entered, maintaining PD, and a new case number is assigned with notifying letters sent advising of the new case number. Once the response is received to the 45-day letter, the case will be placed into the queue by PD, despite the delay
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4. still processing both. RIR queue is now over 17,000 waiting analysis, while TR is only about 1500.
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5. As for approvals, don't have access to that data, but FIFO is followed at this point as well. When the CO is reviewing cases for certification, they pull from a computer maintained queue similar to RIR and TR. This date will float as well, depending on PD's approved for final review by RIR/TR analysts in the interim since the last case pulled by the CO.
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6.Does this mean that the Dallas RIR queue has reached May 2002? In a word, yes. Obviously with the exception of the stray case being put in the queue with a prior PD.
Can you tell us if the number of CO personnel has increased or not and how many cases they are approving and sending out on an average? The CO's have brought on board additional help in reviewing cases for certification.
At what stage is an RFE/NOF being issued ? At the analysis stage or at the CO stage. NOF's are just getting underway. As with the 45-day letters, shortcomings in programming melding PBLS with the letter generation program have held this up. Recent work-arounds have enabled analysts to begin generating NOF's for review. Once a NOF has been confirmed by a CO, it will be sent to the agent/employer for review/remedy.
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7. SWA cases responding to 45-day letter that have made it to analysis queue currently number in the low hundreds. Once data entry is completed on a SWA case, the letter goes out the door within 24 hours just like regional cases. No magic number, they're generated and sent as they are entered Same deal, as cases are put into the queue, they are analyzed in FIFO order. Numbers between Philly and Dallas are relative and are a result of different management teams at each location. Although both are technically the same company, they are not carbon copies of each other. While Philly may be ahead in data entry, Dallas is currently ahead in actual certifications
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8. Yes, all cases transferred to BEC received a 45-day letter once Data Entry is complete
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9. Revising the clear rate down to an average of 4/day (currently) would bring the total down closer to the actual figure of around 1600 cases.
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10.Regional cases were given priority at DOL's direction, as it was assumed that these had been in the system longer, more processing had been accomplished on these cases and they would be cleared more quickly. To meet your criteria for FIFO, all cases (both regional and SWA) would have had to be entered simultaneously if not instantaneously(unlikely).Or, worse, as it had been feared, all case processing would have been put on hold until ALL data entry had been completed(fair?)
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