From the Washington Post:
They were civil rights lawyers, Social Security employees and labor experts. And now they’re all in completely different jobs. To fill vacancies left behind by waves of firing and resignations in the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government, agencies are reassigning people to posts they know little about. That includes people who were forced out of jobs that are required by law or are essential to basic government functions, according to interviews with 20 federal employees across seven departments, most of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. …
The result, employees said, is that work is being done less efficiently by people with little relevant experience or background, even if they have spent years in government in other positions. One former IT worker at the Social Security Administration — newly reassigned to disability benefits processing — described the changes as “leaving a Bugatti in the garage” and “a strategic decapitation of institutional knowledge.” …
21 comments:
The clown administration leads by example and selects cabinet members that have no clue what they are doing. America has become the laughingstock for the world. They figure that this experiment is such a success that they will apply the same standard across government. How is it working out? Midterms elections in 2026 can’t come fast enough! The lesson to all, elections have consequences.
Project 2025 going as planned to cripple Social Security...
It’s a symptom of the times. Relatedly, the new OPM head recently said that the government shouldn’t worry about providing stable employment and instead focus on making the government into a place where smart people work on challenging tasks. In other words, he wants government to function more like it does in reality, rather than the fantasy he and his idiot friends with Fox News brain rot have bought into.
From the same article - "Those positions require deep knowledge of the agency’s rules and systems." Shouldn't a lawyer at SSA already possess deep knowledge of the agency rules? If not how good would they have been as a lawyer, much less a claims specalist?
Bugatti's are hardly ever driven. They tend to stay in garages, and appreciate over time. No one wants a high mileage hypercar. The comparison is ridiculous, no one wants these reassigned people either, that's why they didn't leave.
But...but...I thought as long as they answer the phones quickly, everything would be ok? 🙄
Not all lawyers do the same thing. If they were handling disability appeals at the Appeals Council or in federal court, they wouldn't know the rules for issuing Social Security numbers or replacement cards, or adjusting benefits under the retirement earnings test. If their legal work focused on contracts and procurement, or FOIA, or EEOC complaints by SSA employees, they might not know much about Social Security benefit programs at all. And even if they know the policy, making the systems do the work is different. I know how the rules about ISM, parental deeming, waiving overpayments, etc. But if someone sat me in front of a field office computer and asked me to deal with those issues, I wouldn't even know what systems to use (MSSICS? CCE?) or where to enter the information or how to generate notices...and I could imagine it would take me a while to learn! And there are so many systems, and so many different reasons a person might come into a field office.
Let's be honest though. O'Malley said the checks would stop going out. Didn't happen. People predicted privatization; didn't happen. Major services cuts and FO closures...never happened. So now DOGE looks like geniuses because they cut staff to under 50K, and ultimately, nothing changed.
What a lawyer needs to know to do their job well at SSA is not even in the same solar system as what a claims specialist needs to know. You should go darken Trump’s or Frankie’s doorstep though. You’d fit right in with that crowd given your apparent penchant for thoughtlessly spouting off about things you know nothing of and insulting others in the process.
Ah yes. The notion, only ever put forth only by those unqualified to serve in government, that government workers wouldn’t stick around if they had desirable skills.
Please kindly go crawl in a hole and stay there.
You are a fool! Every internal function changed for the worse. You apparently haven't called or visited an SSA office. No staff to do the necessary jobs and claimants not being served. Systems are down more than they are up and functional. Facilities are in disrepair and no one fixing the situation. Checks have not stopped because once a payment tape is sent to Treasury, payments automatically continue until told to stop. They are basically on autopilot.
Privatization hasn’t happen? Cooking the books doesn’t happen overnight. 🧑🍳
Ultimately nothing has changed? I’m sorry but one can’t argue with ignorance.
No, "nothing" didn't change. Service has gotten immeasurably worse, we're just not publishing the numbers. MANY workloads are not getting done, at all, because the people that used to do them are no longer around. MANY other cases are getting held up because they take longer than 5 minutes to solve and no one is allowed to spend time on them. It's all kicking the can down the road. All of this is a prelude to privatization.
There are a lot more Chiefs and Heads now. I hope that they know what they are doing.
Imagine this same bizarre dynamic on a professional football team. You take a quarterback and make him an offensive lineman. You take a fan from the crowd and make him the quarterback. You make the wide receiver the field goal kicker. How good is a mess like that going to work?
To make matters worse, the training of reassigned employees is being rushed. Leadership is so intent on convincing Frank that these reassignments are a success that they are pushing employees into production work before they are fully qualified. Additionally, much of the work reassignees were responsible for prior to their reassignment still needs to be completed. In some cases this work is simply piling up; in others, reassigned employees are juggling both their old responsibilities and their new ones. To complicate matters further, some employees only accepted their reassignment based on the position description they were offered, only to see that description completely changed a month later with no recourse. At the same time, seasoned and high performing staff are being pulled away from their regular duties in the field offices to train these reassignees, which reduces productivity where it is needed most.
Ha ha ha! Training is rushed?! It's always been rushed. Staffing in FOs has always been short resulting in getting new hires doing things before they actually know what they are doing.
I love this football analogy. I will take liberty to expound.
The seemingly most important problem facing the team is how long it takes for the spectators to get into the stadium. So the concessionaires, ushers, and custodians, etc. are all reassigned to be ticket takers at the gate. The GM is proud and takes a victory lap to proclaim the team is the quickest to get people in the stadium.
Mind you, now there is no one to serve concessions, help people find their seats, or deal with what the fans bring. And there was no quality control at the gate, so people were let in without actually having tickets. So now the stadium is over packed.
And all of the attention is on the fiasco that people have forgotten the team itself was hollowed.
Right on!
Meanwhile we're left with an agency where anybody that can leave, will leave. A high percentage want out, but many feel stuck, so they stay - not because they support the mission of SSA any longer, but because they are afraid to start over with another employer. Many are just stuck in the suck. This current work pattern is not what people signed up for. Being so short staffed in the field is terrible.
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