From Lisa Rein at the Washington Post:
Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online. The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in. The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to 7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology division responsible for the website and other electronic access.
Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said.
22 comments:
Are we overreacting or is the sky falling?
Yep, that’s what happens when you rush IT changes through the system without proper analysis and testing. You wind up providing Microsoft style software. Three finger salute.
NBD, just call. Oh wait, call wait times are skyrocketing and internal SSA systems increasingly unreliable.
Why and what is the plan?
Today, the Office of Systems and other components are being gutted by Antonio Gracias and DOGE. Expect more.
This is what happens when you think you know how to do something, but don’t listen to or get rid of the people who know how to do it. To all those young DOGE guys with limited practical experience who think that hey have all the answers, it’s not as easy as it looks. And, DUDEK SHOULD BE FIRED!
This story appears to be an exaggeration. I’ve been on mySSA 20 times the last three weeks , and it was only down once.
The sabotage continues...
And this is before they RIFd OCIO today.
Got word today the agency is “going dark” with regards to media. I’m sure this means something more ominous but would like some publication on this please. We are living in a vacuum here.
Millions of Social Security recipients got erroneous messages that their payments stopped as computer systems keep glitching
• The Social Security Administrations’ already-fragile computer systems are suffering more glitches than usual, according to reports. One breakdown recently resulted in the agency sending an erroneous message to millions of recipients that said their payments had ended, creating panic. That’s as critical IT staff are leaving amid steep payroll cuts.
The Social Security Administration’s already-fragile and antiquated technology has been having more glitches than usual, sources told CNN.
It’s affecting work systems. Disability hearings have been cancelled d/t network down.
SSA technology is not fragile and is as antiquated as the internal combustion engine which most still use to get to work. Witness the BRI/COLA operation which processes over 60 million records overnight each year with minimal fall-out (0.1%). So how much improvement is possible and is it worth risking total failure? The plan seems to be fix-on-failure, which was the Soviet method for all their technological advances. Well, they have about 7 months to get it right before BRI/COLA operation runs in production. Testing of the current process normally starts in April-May and continues with increasing complexity until early November.
Oh but ACOSS Dudek specifically asked Wayne Lemon during the latest Operational Report on YouTube if the crashes were caused by the ACOSS’ actions to remove staff and Lemon said “no”. I really feel bad for Wayne being put on the spot like that.
Not to mention the SSI overnight runs failed twice last week. Critical payment updates were not made as a result. Initial claims adjudicated did not process delaying the issuance of first time payments.
We seem to be stuck in a nearly-daily outage of some sort.
What is this about RIFs at OCIO and a media blackout?
@9:10 you are spot on. I’m a 30+ year developer in OBIS.
That’s the plan. Break it. Then claim privatization is the only option, as they loot it.
Thanks for your expert opinion, Lee.
Good information. But what is the rate of failure before and after... let's say 'the doge work' any stats ?
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Hanlon's razor was true then and now.
from SSA live updates 04/08/2025 4:06pm Central ssa 800 number wait time right this minute is 3 hours 15 minutes with 15,677 people waiting for call back and 8365 people on hold, approx call back time is 3 hours 11min
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