The Social Security office for this region- Peoria, Bloomington, Champaign, Springfield- has sent out a notice explaining that electronic filing of appeals and documents will be highly encouraged.
Supposedly this will result in more efficient use of personnel and move disability cases faster. We shall see. The current internet system is cumbersome and frustrating to use. Hopefully, the push to use the internet for filing will lead to improvement.
This region has 6,325 Social Security disability cases pending at hearing level, with 8 judges. You can see the problem. The average time from hearing request to decision is 700 days.
The regional office is attempting to decide every case with a hearing request date of April 15, 2006 or older by the end of Fiscal Year 2008.
Let me know your experiences with your disability case.