Bisignano A Prayer Leader

      Frank Bisignano is an "Executive Leader for Prayer" on "The Presidential Prayer Team."

Social Security Mostly Viewed Favorably

      From the Pew Research Center:

 

Chief Data Officer Resigns Over Misuse Of Agency Data

    I guess it's a coincidence this happened on the Friday afternoon before Labor Day. From the New York Times:

The Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, has resigned, three days after submitting a whistle-blower complaint that alleged members of the Department of Government Efficiency had uploaded the confidential personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure cloud server.

In his resignation letter, Borges said that he was quitting in part because he could not “verify that agency data is being used in accordance with legal agreements or in compliance with federal requirements.”

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COSS On Fox Business

      The Commissioner of Social Security has appeared on Fox Business to claim that his agency is now providing the best service to the public that it has ever provided.

Whistleblower Complains Of Data Security Risk -- How Long Until He's Fired?

      From the New York Times:

Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.

The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.

The account by the whistle-blower, Charles Borges, underscores concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency built by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data.  …

     See also an article in the Washington Post on the whistleblower complaint. 

     The biggest question in my mind is why? Getting a copy of this vital database out of Social Security seems to have been an overriding priority for the Trump Administration. They had to have known they were doing something dangerous and probably illegal. Why the urgency? What did they want to do with the data? What are they doing?

     

What Is The Definition Of "Answer"?

      The Ohio Capital Journal has out a long article on service at the Social Security Administration. It mostly quotes former Commissioner Martin O'Malley. Here are a couple of very brief quotes from the piece:

...  O’Malley, the former Democratic governor of Maryland, claimed that under its current management, the Social Security Administration is no longer reporting some metrics to Congress and manipulating others to gaslight the public. ...

O’Malley described one way he thinks the new administration is manipulating some of the metrics it does report.

At the start of 2024, the 8 million who called the agency’s 1-800 number each month had to wait 42.5 minutes on average to get through. After a vendor and technology change, the agency got the average wait down to 12.8 minutes before beneficiaries could get an answer, O’Malley said.

The Social Security Administration on Monday reported that it had gotten those wait times down even further, to eight minutes. But O’Malley said it appears to have simply changed the definition of “answer.”

“‘Answer’ would appear to be anytime a person calls and hangs up after hearing a recording, or calls and gets run around the barn three times by a chatbot and has their call dumped,” he said. “That’s what they call ‘answered.’ That’s what they call ‘served.’ None of it bears any reality to what people are experiencing.” 

A call Wednesday to the Social Security Administration’s Georgesville Road field office in Columbus appeared to produce such a result. A caller was asked by a chatbot why he was calling. When he said he wanted to check his eligibility, the chatbot hung up. ...

    It's much the same as in most aspects of the Trump Administration -- lies, exaggerations, and carefully plucked statistics that misrepresent the true situation. The experts know the truth but the public doesn't know who to believe so they believe what they want to believe until reality smacks them in the face.

 

Better And Better!

     From Yahoo!Finance:

The Social Security Administration has reported significant improvements in how it serves the public. According to its latest performance metrics Americans have collectively saved an estimated 43 million hours over the past year due to faster service and expanded access across online, phone, and in-person channels. …