Representative Availability Portal for Social Security Administration (SSA) Hearings

As part of the appeals process, claimants can request a hearing with an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). Approximately 80 percent of claimants have appointed representatives at the hearing level. When the Social Security Administration (SSA) schedules hearings before an ALJ, it usually considers the availability of appointed representatives, if applicable. Appointed representatives may be members of large firms, appearing at hearings nationwide, or may be solo practitioners servicing a specific geographic location or hearing office. In both situations, it is typical for appointed representatives to represent more than one claimant at any given moment; some represent hundreds of claimants at once. Historically, the process of seeking, tracking, and considering representative availability has been a manual and time-intensive activity. In the past, hearing offices sought representative availability information by contacting each representative individually. More recently, Office of Hearings Operations’ Regional Offices representatives collected availability information. However, the process for gathering and considering representative availability was not standardized and varied greatly amongst Regional Offices. The appointed representative community informed SSA they would appreciate a consistent and standardized electronic process to submit their availability for hearing appearances. In the Spring of 2023, SSA initiated the Enhanced Representative Availability Process (ERAP) to provide representatives with a more standardized and streamlined process to email their availability for hearings. In the interim, SSA also obtained OMB approval to test a new Representative Availability Portal (Portal) to offer the representative community a web-based option to submit their monthly availability to SSA. SSA tested the portal among 11 appointed representative practice groups nationwide. We are currently seeking OMB approval for the national rollout of the Portal, which collects standardized information regarding appointed representative availability for the purpose of scheduling hearings. SSA plans to roll the Portal out to all appointed representatives registered with the Registration, Appointment and Services for Representatives (RASR) application, other professional representatives who regularly conduct hearing business with SSA but are not registered with RASR, and delegated officials from appointed representative’s Designated Scheduling Groups (DSG). A DSG is a representative-identified scheduling group which can include one representative, or multiple representatives. Respondents will need to have a mySocial Security account to use the Portal and be registered into the Portal by SSA systems. Respondents who wish to use the Portal, but who are not registered with RASR, or who do not have a Representative ID, must provide SSA systems with the necessary data, including name and SSN, to complete the Portal registration process. SSA will use the Portal to track availability for hearings for the DSG. Representatives provide hearing availability for the DSG monthly, and SSA considers the DSG-provided availability when scheduling hearings. SSA will announce the response window for the Portal each month. Following the submission deadline, the Portal will ‘‘lock,’’ and respondents will not be able to submit availability through the Portal at that time (although SSA will have the capacity to unlock if there is good cause). We expect use of the Portal will result in receiving consistent structured data from appointed representatives, which will allow for a more streamlined and effective hearing scheduling process. It also meets a long-standing customer-experience request from the representative community. The respondents are appointed representatives, and delegated officials from appointed representatives DSGs who need to submit their availability to SSA for hearings.

The latest form for Representative Availability Portal for Social Security Administration (SSA) Hearings expires 2027-06-30 and can be found here.