From the Washington Post:
The Social Security Administration — already reeling from plunging customer service following a rapid downsizing under the Trump administration — is drafting plans to begin layoffs of potentially thousands more employees as soon as next week. The cuts have been ordered by leaders of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team, the U.S. DOGE Service …
The DOGE team did not provide a specific number of jobs that must be eliminated, officials said, but asked for staff reductions to broad areas of operation, including communications, personnel, legislative and congressional affairs, retirement and disability policy, and other “support components.” Also on the list is the information technology department of about 4,000 employees, which is confronting a flurry of website crashes that has shut out customers from accessing their benefit information. Up to 800 people could be laid off in that department, according to one senior official. …
And from CNN:
The Social Security Administration plans to slash its technology team by nearly one-third at a time when the agency’s complex and fragile computer systems are crashing more often. Top executives in the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, known as OCIO, have been tasked with cutting 30% of its staff as part of a large-scale reduction-in-force being implemented across the federal government, according to two former employees with direct knowledge of the plan. The office had about 3,200 employees, though it has already lost hundreds of experienced workers due to retirement and separation incentives. (It has also gained some staffers after the agency shuttered other divisions and transferred the functions to OCIO.) …
If you were trying to crash the agency, this would be how you would do it. I’m not sure that’s the intent. It really doesn’t matter. That’s the effect.
