From a Washington Post article on Inspectors General:
… At the Social Security Administration, acting inspector general Michelle Anderson meets regularly with Commissioner Frank Bisignano and has given him information about her work, according to two people familiar with the meetings. Anderson has wanted to maintain a good relationship with Bisignano, the people said.
The inspector general’s office has largely avoided digging into the work of the U.S. DOGE Service at the agency, but it recently told Congress it is investigating allegations that a DOGE member has improper access to sensitive Social Security data. Before that, it had told senators last year that it would not evaluate the agency’s decision to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead.
In December, the Social Security IG released an audit of the agency’s phone metrics, which found that the wait time for someone to talk to a representative had dropped to single-digit minutes. Agency leaders celebrated the report as a vindication of their claims that they had improved customer service. Bisignano later told staffers he had thought the inspector general had wasted taxpayer dollars even looking into the statistics, according to a recording of his remarks.
However, an unpublished draft of the report reviewed by The Post showed that the inspector general had planned to report another metric — called the “total wait time” — to measure the overall time it takes for callers to be connected with an SSA employee. According to that draft report, in 2025 total wait time averaged 46 minutes to over two hours. That information was deleted from the draft after the agency reviewed it before publication, according to the document’s revision history. …
I guess she wants to keep her job. Don't report anything the administration doesn't like, because if you do, Trump will fire you, too. Congress won't do a damn thing. This has been Senator Grassley's pet issue for decades and he has barely made a peep about the IG bloodbath.
ReplyDeleteI was amazed to see in that report (and amazed now that it got published!) that if SSA tells you they'll call you back and they haven't gotten to you by the end of the day, they don't try again the next day. They just wipe the slate clean. So there's really no point in accepting a callback late in the day.
ReplyDeleteThis reads like some historical account straight out of the robber-baron era of the gilded age.
ReplyDeleteAt a bare minimum, I demand that inspectors general not collude with the people they are supposed to investigate, "maintaining good relationships" be damned.
Dude, I am Gen X, we have never trusted anything or anyone in government.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to "trust anyone." You should demand accountability. This administration is destroying the purpose of independent Inspectors General, because they fear the exposure of their wrongdoing.
DeleteHey, 9:30, I'm a Boomer. Our slogan in the 1960s was, "Don't trust anyone over 30!"
DeleteA lot of the population shares your opinion of government. I wish I could understand why it causes them to rabidly support the least trustworthy and most nakedly corrupt candidates for office. Is it nihilism? Plain stupidity?
DeleteI'm Gen X too. I totally agree. I miss "boring" government that didn't really NEED trust, not that we trusted them anyway, we knew better. Government is supposed to go on behind the scenes, but with oversight. I long for the days of no smart anything, riding bikes until dusk with no worries, and drinking out of a hose while filling up a homemade, tarp lined, swimming pool. Not all this worrying about if some lunatic is gonna wipe out all our country has worked for centuries to build. It's never been perfect, of course, but this reality show government is the exact opposite of the times Generation X grew up. Yes, of course there were problems, but nothing like THIS mess. d:-(
DeleteI suspected the ACTING IG's independence would be easily compromised. This is report is credible and sadly, expected.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtube.com/shorts/AcKPh4XVcNU?si=2albQjC9xx4Lsa4v
ReplyDeleteI want Congress or media FOIA request to get data about:
ReplyDelete* Number of people each day who request a callback but are not called back that day.
* Number or people each day who called because they did not get their requested callback.
* Number of people who call the 800# and/or local office more than once in the same day, and also multiple times in the same week regardless of the day.
* in the breakdown of who calls 800#, how many used (or tried to use) telephone automation but who then called again and spoke with an agent.
And yes, SSA can look at common telephone number for this. I’m not suggesting matching to an SSN that we know isn’t captured in many cases. So PII not a problem.
I want Frank, Arjun, and each political and career chief to take the same brief training that the people “detailed” to the 800# took (and only that training), and go on phones for a full day. And someone to listen and/or capture the “result” of each call including who it was who “helped” the customer.
Let’s see it.