Grace Kim, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for Operations, has been awarded the Presidential Rank for Distinguished Service. This award was given to 48 federal civil servants across all agencies.
Kim is in charge of much of Social Security operations providing service to the public. The service is terrible. Why give her an award? I don't know enough about what Kim has done to say whether she deserves the award but poor service was inevitable given the serious underfunding of agency operations. It's possible to do a better or a worse job of dealing with a difficult situation. It's certainly stressful to do a better job of handling a disastrous situation that's not of your own making.
