I'm surprised that Frank Bisignano wants the job as Social Security Commissioner. He's now the highly paid CEO of a very successful corporation. It's his niche and apparently he's very good at it. Is he aware of the problems he'll face at Social Security?
- If he thinks he'll lead Social Security out of its long term financing problems, he's deluded. Senators of both parties will demand that he promise that he will stay completely away from long term financing issues. He can't be confirmed without making such promises. For that matter, I'm pretty sure that Trump would want him to stay away from such issues. Also, if he actually looks into the political thicket surrounding it, he'll want nothing to do with Social Security "reform." Let Elon Musk take that bullet.
- If he thinks he can in any sense "transform" Social Security, he's deluded. There's no simple fix, technical or otherwise, for Social Security's service delivery problems. There's not even a complicated set of fixes that don't take a lot of money and time. It's highly unlikely that he'll get more money.
- If he thinks that he'll have an advantage because he knows nothing about Social Security and won't be held back by old ideas, he's deluded. In any job, it helps to know how things are already set up, what the obstacles to change are, and what ideas have been tried before and how they worked out. The people who came before you weren't fools (except for Jo Anne Barnhart). Social Security isn't a Gordian knot and Bisignano won’t have have a sword.
- If he thinks that the real problem at Social Security is that federal employees are stupid and lazy, he's deluded. That sort of arrogance would lead to indifference, if not joy, in losing the experienced, hard-working employees who keep the Social Security Administration afloat. Not every agency employee is a star but they mostly do their jobs ably. There just aren't enough of them.
- If he thinks that ending telework will make Social Security significantly more effective, he's deluded. I've been around long enough to know that telework makes little, if any, difference. If telework ends, some percentage of employees will quit. My guess is that it won't be that high a percentage but that's just a guess. Nobody knows. Losing even a few experienced people will hurt an agency that's as bad off as the Social Security Administration. The commonly held view that Social Security is simple is simply wrong. For example, there's not just one type of Social Security disability benefit. Depending upon how you count them, there are as many as seven (remember that blindness is a separate category under both Title II and Title XVI)! And don't get him started on the windfall offset! It'll blow his mind. It takes long training and considerable experience for an employee to become competent.
- If he thinks he can transform the Social Security Administration with new IT, he's deluded. When the companies that Gisignano has led have needed to spend money to acquire new IT systems, all he's had to do was to convince a complaisant board of directors to approve the money. The money was available since the companies were profitable. The situation at Social Security is entirely different. Convincing the White House to approve additional funding will be hard enough. Convincing Congress is much more difficult. Martin O'Malley is a born lobbyist. How far did he get? Is Gisignano any kind of lobbyist?
- If he thinks that fighting employee unions will make the Social Security Administration more effective, he's deluded. The unions can be a pain in the neck but they have just about no effect on productivity. Spending energy fighting them isn't worth it. They're not the enemy.
28 comments:
Frank Bisignano, like Andrew Saul,, has little relevant experience, has not run an agency, and has little knowledge about SSA.
Both of these Trump nominations for SSA commissioner were poor choices. He seems to think bringing Commissioners in from private industry , those with right leaning views , will make SSA efficient. But it actually has the opposite effect.
Things got worse for SSA employees and beneficiaries, under Saul's arrogant dictates. Case processing time went up. I fear similar results this time around.
His job is to privatize Social Social by any means and make his Wall Street friends even happier.
SSA and AFGE just signed a new contract protecting telework at current levels for 5 years. Most knowledgeable people agree this is a good move, that telework has helped production, retention, and morale among SSA employees.
If Bisignano comes in and immediiately tries to get out of that contract, in order to force employees back to the office 5 days a week, that will be a big mistake.
That would seriously damage his reputation and relationship with SSA employees and AFGE. And the backlogs would increase too, due to experienced employees retiring or quitting.
I am always surprised anyone takes the job. With budget control out of your hands, with policy change out of your hands, with union bargaining out of your hands, there really isnt much you can actually do but be scapegoat and punching bag for pundits.
He doesn't care about any of that stuff. He is going to focus on contracting out as many jobs as possible. Think it can't happen? Take a look at all the things we contract out now.
I would be okay with some things being contracted out to get them done. VA moved a bunch of its home and community based services out of house and to individual providers inside regional state areas. Much quicker and better services, staff was trained by the VA. SSA could contract out things to Area Agency on Aging and those grantees. They handle SHIP. Those SHIPs could be trained by SSA to do initial claims, many of them are already doing it anyway. They could be paid to do so. They are non profits, so there isnt the conflict of paying attys to do the work and then represent the claim. Claimants would then have the opportunity to engage representation if they so desired.
SSA has proven that they cant do identity as well as some outside systems, like getting a password for a MySSA. They are contracted to other folks like IDMe and GovID. Those work, and similar things can be done to move some of the less critical tasks off of the understaffed agency to private or nonprofits to handle. What we have hasnt really worked for clients for the last couple of decades so maybe a change is in order and SSA can focus on the unusual, the difficult and the things that need more development and expertise.
@11:34 But why is the agency understaffed? Is it not a funding problem? How would contracting out solve the funding issue? In the disability context, there are many things SSA could do internally to save staff time/$$, and offload responsibilities to attorneys. O'Malley made the first step of making more case information available to reps. Any number of software/regulation changes could help more, but I see no indication that is the direction SSA will go.
A software CEO would be a good fit for improving IT systems and adding true automations, but better software absolutely requires better funding in the short-term. This makes me think he was hired for his other main area of competency-- private equity cost cutting that relies heavily on driving out employees to save money in the short-term.
He has a long history in more traditional finance roles, including JP Morgan. So all of his experience points to a goal to partially privatize operations, or the trust fund itself.
I know privatized SSA trust fund is the favorite boogeyman of the blog here and elsewhere, but the undertaking to do that would have to be approved via congress in overwhelming numbers. They are not going to privatize it, we saw that attempt crash and burn quite dramatically with the Bush administration. Outsourcing may come, and it doesnt need to be a horrible thing. Many agencies do it, why not SSA?
We live in a different era. Did you ever believe that voters would re-elected a convicted felon to another four year term?
Where is the conflict in "paying attys to do the work then represent the claim"? The payment is for representation. And where are SHIPS completing initial claims work? You know that most SHIPS are run by State agencies, right? State Social Service offices are not funded or run any better than SSA. Many of the case managers are outright hostile towards the public they serve. DDS offices would be the far more logical choice for State agency outsourcing.
Application processing is problematic even where attorney reps complete the initial application -- I know because our firm prefers to start representation from the app stage. The FOs have trouble simply processing completed online apps and appeals. Its not just a manpower issue. They are making basic non-medical processing errors and issuing technical denials without notice. The outsourcers have to be capable of training. It would better to start with simplifying POM procedures/regs. You do not need Congress to do this.
Yes I firmly believed the vote would fall as it was predicted. Just like I believe there is no way to privatize SSA trust fund money. It is to convoluted and completely insane to run individual accounts. It will just never happen. But It makes a great scary story
You are presuming they care about things like that. They don't.
I predict Trump will demonstrate that with a back-to-office executive order within 30-60 days of taking office. And, he'll fire anyone that refuses. When the unions file lawsuits, he'll instruct HIS Justice Department to defend his actions, all the way to a Supreme Court that doesn't care about the law, but rather considers the law to be whatever they need to get their way. He'll win there, too.
Frank is the man to fix Social Security. He is an expert in something folks are overlooking: automation. Once the payment process and application is automated, sprinkle in some AI and SSA will be running like never before. Recall Fiserv stock doubled under Frank-the-Tank; Social Security will be no different. Folks on this blog and Charles himself will be blown away by how efficient it will run.
If your firm is getting a lot of technical denials, it's probably making a lot of technical errors. A lot of firms that take clients at the initial level seem to have problems with that. Might be something to look into.
There is no reason Frank Bisignano should be running SSA unless he wishes to profit by privatizing Social Security.
The Milwaukee Business Journal listed Bisignano as the highest-paid Wisconsin public company executive in the most recent fiscal year, with compensation totaling more than $27.9 million, 83% of that in stock awards.
Frank does not live in Wisconsin, and from when he became CEO in 2020 to 2024 he doubled the stock price of Fiserv. You don't double a large corporation's stock by being incompetent. Frank taking the Commissioner job shows he is unafraid of a challenge. I'm very excited to see what he can do at SSA.
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SSA has attempted automation many times and the results promised are rarely delivered. Ssa also has no budget to purchase new software and automation systems. The system runs on cobol with a graphical user interface to simplify for the front end user. The promise to automate was proposed many times and failed. In a private company executives can invest capital to upgrade IT. In SSA the budget is starved, automation cannot happen until money is invested to upgrade the systems.
I see Frank has found Charles’ blog.
And Trump will get Mexico to pay for the wall. After Trump's first term, I was tired of winning. Not.
Being the highest paid in Wisconsin is like being the smartest in Arkansas, not much competition. And no apologies to those states. Truth hurts
Not sure if this is satire. But a short-term stock doubling is not a long-term indicator for efficiency. There is no correlation there.
Ironically, he probably would be well suited to fix SSA IT issues and create real automations that reduce routine medial tasks...but he will never be given the budget to do so. That leaves us with AI magic as our last best hope lol.
i turn 65 in two years. I will be retiring then. I had planned on continuing work in social services providing assistance to low income aging and disabled individuals. This change of regime and the changes I am seeing with the Wizzard of Oz taking over Medicare and a tech bro taking over SSA are just chasing me to the sidelines, if it gets bad enough, I will take the penalty and go out early and work PT at Home Depot.
No need to quit @1:54 Stay on and do great things with Mr. Bisignano. A spirited leader who has transformed major corporations, you'll be blown away by what he can do to a stodgy old agency like SSA. I think Social Security employees will be really impressed by what he does. The amount of technology he can incorporate will bolster morale, and he will bring great unity to the agency. Would hate to see you miss out on it.
Who told the right wing spam-bots about this blog? SMH.
The biggest thing that would provide a morale boost to the agency would be transferring the entire Medicare workload to the agency whose namesake ironically doesn't enroll people in Medicare. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) should be responsible for enrollment and disenrollment if they are also generating the bills that we have to answer questions about at SSA. If the Medicare workload was transitioned to CMS, SSA would be much better off.
To stay positive, I like some other ideas mentioned above including making our automation process easier. Just this morning, I had to find a magnifying glass to inspect some paystubs that had been faxed from a phone using screenshots. This was labor-intensive and a time-waste for the agency. Where is the employer-interface they've been talking about for years? If they roll out this employer-payroll-interface, that would also eliminate thousands of hours of basic data entry that is subject to human clerical error, resulting in improper/incorrect notices, further resulting in phone calls, unnecessary appeals, office visits, and unbelievable wait times for the public we serve.
I'm going to keep a positive outlook on this new commissioner until we start getting directives from him. I never thought O'Malley would do much good, but I was surprised by him...
We'll see how well VA is doing in a year. His VA secretary nominee is already talking about doing major cuts in VA's medical support for veterans.
None of this will matter at all, he's only being appointed to fire as many employees as possible. He's not going to care at all about the consequences or the program.
Rash judgment used to not be so prominently espoused.
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