Proof Of What You Already Knew

      From HuffPost:

A week after Maine Gov. Janet Mills clashed publicly with President Donald Trump at the White House over transgender athletes in girls’ sports, Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of Social Security, asked his staff about what contracts Maine had with the Social Security Administration. 

The agency has vital records contracts with every state, allowing parents to request Social Security numbers for their newborns at the hospital and to verify deaths through an electronic system.

According to emails obtained by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Social Security staff informed Dudek that canceling the contracts “would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft.” 

Dudek told his staff to go for it.

“Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child,” Dudek wrote, referring to Mills. …

     The real question is whether Dudek acted on his own initiative or whether he acted upon directions form the White House. My strong suspicion is that this came from the White House. 

Bisignano Nomination Advances

     The Bisignano nomination to become Commissioner of Social Security has advanced. The Senate Finance Committee has reported out the nomination favorably. We will see how soon the entire Senate will act on this. There may be a desire to put an adult in charge as quickly as possible. 

    We don't know how much control Bisignano will have over the brats from DOGE or whether the Office of Management and Budget will order arbitrary staffing cuts that Bisignano will be unable to resist. Of course, we don't know what Bisignano himself wants. I'd like to project upon him my desire that he act responsibly or that,  at the least, that he try to avoid presiding over a disaster but it's more than possible that Bisignano is a true believer who cannot imagine that there's a connection between staffing levels and public service. He may even believe that public service doesn't matter.

Lining Up For Service

      There are people lining up two hours before a Social Security field office is set to open in Iowa. Also, I expect in every other state. Some lined up are big DOGE supporters.

Bisignano Nomination Goes Into Overtime

      I have no idea what happened yesterday with the Bisignano nomination. The Senate Finance Committee held a session to consider the nomination but recessed without a vote after some member statements on the nomination. Maybe it had something to do with Senator Booker’s filibuster. In any case, they’re scheduled to meet again to consider the nomination at 2:15 Eastern today. This session won’t be televised,

What The Whistleblower Said

     In the Bisignano confirmation hearing there was reference to correspondence from a current or former Social Security employee concerning Bisignano's contacts with agency personnel. I haven't seen that correspondence until today. We still don't know who this is from but here it is and, as always, click on the images to view full size:

 

 

Replacing COBOL At Social Security Is A Bad Idea

     From Waldo Jaquith, described as a former government technologist, writing for MSNBC:

...  Wired magazine reported last week that the Department of Government Efficiency plans to replace the mainframes that power the agency’s mission and rebuild their functionality on new servers in a new programming language — with just a few months’ work.

Assuming Wired’s reporting is accurate, we know that such an effort will surely fail. The track record of decades of modernizations of thousands of software systems, in both the private and public sectors, makes that clear. This isn’t even an interesting-yet-flawed idea. It’s a hackneyed, clichéd bad idea that could only sound compelling to novice software developers. It’s like cooking a Thanksgiving turkey in 20 minutes by putting it in a blast furnace, or choosing to get measles instead of getting vaccinated against it: it sounds most convincing to the layperson who asks the fewest questions.  ...

Critics complain that the COBOL programming language, widely in use in the SSA, is old and outdated. This is wrong. While COBOL’s origins date to 1959, it’s an actively maintained programming language, with an updated standard published by the International Standards Organization in 2023. The advanced age of actively maintained languages is evidence of their sustainability and quality. ...

Critics also complain that mainframes are antiquated in an era of cloud computing. In fact, mainframes are still in wide use throughout the public and private sectors. They are not the room-sized reel-to-reel machines of the 1960s, but instead sleek, modern machines that would turn any developer’s head. They excel anywhere that it’s important to have lots of processing power, high redundancy and the ability to muscle through big batches of data processing—precisely what the SSA needs. ...

Replacing COBOL is a special challenge, for a reason generally known only to experienced COBOL developers: math works differently in COBOL. It handles decimals unlike any other programming language, which is particularly important for large financial systems working at the scale of the SSA. What COBOL might calculate as 1,000.99, Java might calculate as 1,000.98. Neither number is wrong in a mathematical sense, but for an accounting and payment system designed around decades of COBOL-based math, the Java-based answer is functionally wrong. For a system making 840 million financial transactions annually, such a small difference in math can quickly spiral into a disaster. ...

DOGE To The Rescue

      DOGE is saying that they’ve corrected almost all of the Numident records kept by Social Security to show that anyone 120 years of age or older is dead. Of course, this is a complete waste of time. Numident isn’t used to pay benefits. There are separate databases for that and they don’t include anyone older than 115 but, hey, if it impresses the rubes who voted for Trump it’s all for a good cause. Of course, despite this, those rubes will still believe that 150 year olds are being paid because the rubes are credulous fools.

Trump Orders End To Treasury Issued Paper Checks

     I missed this one. Last week Trump ordered an end to Treasury issued paper checks as of September 30 of this year. 

    I think it's better than 95% of Social Security claimants who receive their benefits by direct deposit now but there are those who still need paper checks. One important group who still need paper checks are claimants who have lacked the funds to keep a bank account open while they wait months and years for their Social Security disability claims to be approved. They're only too happy to receive their payments by direct deposits once they have money to put in an account but not for that first check or two.

    Yes, I know there are benefit cards but the fees on those are ridiculous. More important, most folks still have a bank account when they file their Social Security disability claim but later have to close the bank account because they're broke so they won't be set up for a benefit card. 

    We'll see how this plays out. In theory, they aren't supposed to be paper checks even now but circumstances on the ground don't match up with what armchair theorists think possible. A little leeway is needed.

COBOL Isn’t The Problem

           Mar Hicks wrote a few years ago about an episode where Republican leaders tried to blame COBOL for basic governmental agency failings that had nothing to do with COBOL. As he writes:

… But despite [COBOL’s advantages], there’s a cottage industry devoted to making fun of COBOL precisely for its strengths. COBOL’s qualities of being relatively self-documenting, having a short onboarding period (though a long path to becoming an expert), and having been originally designed by committee for big, unglamorous, infrastructural business systems all count against it. So does the fact that it did not come out of a research-oriented context, like languages such as C, ALGOL, or FORTRAN.

In a broader sense, hating COBOL was—and is—part of a struggle between consolidating and protecting computer programmers’ professional prestige on the one hand, and making programming less opaque and more accessible on the other. There’s an old joke among programmers: “If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read.” In other words, if your code is easy to understand, maybe you and your skills aren’t all that unique or valuable. If management thinks the tools you use and the code you write could be easily learned by anyone, you are eminently replaceable. 

The fear of this existential threat to computing expertise has become so ingrained in the field that many people don’t even see the preference for complex languages for what it is: an attempt to protect one’s status by favoring tools that gate-keep rather than those that assist newcomers. …

Bisignano Nomination Advancing

      The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a meeting for 10:00 Eastern for April 1 to advance the Bisignano nomination to become Commissioner of Social Security.

Even AEI Thinks Social Security Was Well Run — Until January 20, 2025

      From the right wing think tank American Enterprise Institute:

Here in the DOGE era, the specter of inefficient bureaucracy haunts many government agencies. Yet the Social Security Administration (SSA) offers a surprising counter-narrative—at least in parts. As civil servants go, those administering retirement benefits are a relatively efficient bunch, according to AEI scholar Mark Warshawsky, who until 2021 served as the agency’s deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy. 

As he tells in a new podcast, “I would say, in terms of the retirement side, it is a well-run program.” The Internal Revenue Service efficiently collects payroll taxes and administers benefit taxation, while disbursements flow with minimal leakage through fraud or processing errors. This efficiency is all the more remarkable given the program’s gargantuan scale—some $1.3 trillion in annual benefits.

Less efficient, Warshawsky goes on to explain, is the Disability Insurance part of Social Security. It demands substantially more administrative resources, with means-testing, medical evaluations, and ongoing eligibility verification creating a bit of a bureaucratic morass. Likewise, the Supplemental Security Income program is also particularly cumbersome, requiring detailed scrutiny of both income and assets.

Recent criticisms of the agency seem overblown, however. Claims about payments to long-deceased beneficiaries are demonstrably false. The SSA employs robust verification mechanisms, including automatic investigation of nonagenarians without recent medical claims and outright benefit denial for anyone claiming to exceed 115 years of age. …

DOGE Strikes Again!

 

From the Washington Post

What Could Go Wrong?

     From Wired:

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest programming languages in a matter of months, potentially putting the integrity of the system—and the benefits on which tens of millions of Americans rely—at risk.

The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell WIRED, and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months. ...

SSA’s core “logic” is also written largely in COBOL. This is the code that issues social security numbers, manages payments, and even calculates the total amount beneficiaries should receive for different services, a former senior SSA technologist who worked in the office of the chief information officer says. Even minor changes could result in cascading failures across programs.

“If you weren't worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead,” says Dan Hon, principal of Very Little Gravitas, a technology strategy consultancy that helps government modernize services, about completing such a migration in a short timeframe.

    You may recall that Frank Bisignano testified at his confirmation hearing that COBOL was still widely used in business and that its presence at Social Security was nothing to be too concerned about. 

Sure, No Problem

      From Forbes:

Elon Musk lauded his Department of Government Efficiency in a Thursday interview with Fox News, saying the work of the agency, which has drawn criticism over its sweeping and rapid layoffs to the federal workforce, will allow Social Security recipients to “receive more money.” …

Press Release Denying Field Office Closures

 

Press Release

Thursday, March 27, 2025

For Immediate Release

Mark Hinkle, Press Officer

press.office@ssa.gov

Correcting the Record about Social Security Office Closings

reports in the media that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is permanently closing local field offices are false. Since January 1, 2025, the agency has not permanently closed or announced the permanent closure of any local field office. From time to time, SSA must temporarily close a local field office for reasons such as weather, damage, or facilities issues, and it reopens when the issues are resolved. The agency has announced the permanent closure of one hearing office, in White Plains, NY.

SSA works closely with local congressional delegations before closing any office permanently. The agency also reassigns employees from an affected office to other locations to help communities access in-person services.

“SSA is committed to providing service where people need help and our local field offices are no exception,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “We have not permanently closed any local field offices this year.”

SSA identified for the General Services Administration underutilized office space to ensure the government is spending taxpayer money as prudently as possible. The agency provided GSA a list of sites for termination. Most of these are small hearing rooms with no assigned employees. Since most hearings are held virtually, SSA no longer needs these underutilized rooms.

Dudek Walks Back Some Of What He Told The Court! (In Case Dudek Doesn't Know, That's Not Cool)

     Also, the Court was not impressed with the argument that DOGE needs access to non-anonymized data in order to find patterns of fraud when they have no evidence that a pattern of fraud exists. Find it first and then those involved can be identified. 

DOGE Trying To Get Back In Social Security Databases

     The Social Security Administration is asking Court approval to let DOGE team members back in to the agency's databases. If these DOGE employees employees actually do what they say they're going to do all but one of them, at best, will be engaged in a ridiculous waste of time. I thought they were trying to root out wasteful behavior, not engage in it. See below and, as always, click on the image to view full size:

 

Orthopedic Listing Interpretation Change Upcoming

      During the pandemic Social Security made the criteria for approval of a disability claim based upon some orthopedic conditions less onerous. Regulations adopted just before Joe Biden took office had required certain medical evidence within “a close proximity of time.” The Biden Administration interpreted the phrase in a less demanding way because of the difficulties that people had obtaining medical care during the pandemic. I think there was also a realization that the Trump Administration Listings were just too difficult to meet with or without a pandemic. This temporary change was later extended until May of this year but late in the Biden Administration it was extended until 2029.

     Social Security has now issued an Emergency Message saying that while the extension to 2029 remains in effect  “the agency will be revisiting its policy before then.”

     The moral of this story is that if a new Administration doesn’t like a regulation adopted during a prior Administration, it should change the regulation. Don’t just play games with how you interpret it. The Trump Administration would have far more trouble dealing with an actual change in a Listing than with a mere interpretation. The Listings should have been changed in other ways as well. It remains just too tough to meet. It’s the same problem as the changes in the treatment of overpayments introduced by Commmissioner O’Malley.  It took no effort for a shambling joke of an Acting Commissioner to reverse O’Malley’s changes even though what O’Malley had done was popular with Republicans as well as Democrats.

My Thoughts On The Bisignano Confirmation Hearing

     I have finally watched the Bisignano confirmation hearing. I found it tedious. For the most part, it wasn't a job interview. It was a performance by all parties. I understand that there are private meetings between nominees and Senators. I hope those are more substantive. 

    Anyway, here are a few thoughts:

• Bisignano said he would improve Social Security's technology generally and telephone answering. How can he possibly do this without a substantially higher appropriation? He wasn't asked about this. I wish he had been.
• Bisignano said he was committed to a six year term. I don't know but I'll be surprised if he's still there in December 2028 much less December 2030.
• Bisignano and Committee members repeatedly likened the work of the Social Security Administration to the work of the companies Bisignano has led. I don't have experience in those businesses but I just can't imagine the work of those companies being that similar to what Social Security does. Social Security is unique. It's work is vastly more complicated than processing massive numbers of simple credit card charges. He said he had 13,000 IT professionals at Fiserv. He'll have a vastly lower number at Social Security and no funds to hire more.
• Nobody asked Bisignano where he will be working. Will he be engaging in much telework from his home in New York City? I think agency employees would be interested to know. If they're being forced back to the office so should the Commissioner
• Bisignano talked about reducing improper payments as if no one at Social Security has ever tried to reduce them. That's wrong. There have been extensive efforts by many people over many decades. I don't think there are any measures imaginable to substantially reduce them. Only incremental progress is possible.
• Bisignano added a useful note of reality to the discussion of COBOL programs at Social Security. He said that COBOL is still being used extensively not just at Social Security but in many, many businesses. 
• I don’t think that anyone asked Bisignano about the Regional Office consolidations. This process couldn’t have advanced very far. I keep thinking that this bad idea will be quietly abandoned.
• I remain convinced that everybody in the Trump Administration thinks that federal employees are stupid and lazy and that simple measures can lead to dramatic improvements in government functioning even with fewer government employees. This is a fallacy. 
• Bisignano testified that in his business experience he did not arbitrarily pick a number of employees to fire without analyzing how many employees were needed to get the work done. DOGE has not been following this obvious practice.
• By the way, it appears that Senator Warnock has a trigger finger -- his right pinkie. I'm mystifying many readers, I'm sure. I talking about something medical here. It’s what I do.

Identity Proofing Won't Apply To Disability Claims

Press Release

Social Security Updates Recently Announced Identity Proofing Requirements

In-Person Requirement Will Not Apply to Disability Insurance, Medicare, and SSI Applications

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is taking proactive steps to enhance the security of its services by implementing stronger identity verification procedures. The updated measures will further safeguard Social Security records and benefits for millions of Americans against fraudulent activity. In-person identity proofing for people unable to use their personal my Social Security account for certain services will be effective April 14, 2025.

“We have listened to our customers, Congress, advocates, and others, and we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “In addition to extending the policy’s effective date by two weeks to ensure our employees have the training they need to help customers, Medicare, Disability, and SSI applications will be exempt from in-person identity proofing because multiple opportunities exist during the decision process to verify a person’s identity.”

Under the updated policy beginning April 14, 2025, individuals applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Medicare, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) who cannot use a personal my Social Security account can complete their claim entirely over the telephone without the need to come into an office.

Individuals who cannot use their personal my Social Security account to apply for benefits will only need to prove their identity at a Social Security office if applying for Retirement, Survivors, or Auxiliary (Spouse or Child) benefits. SSA will enforce online digital identity proofing or in-person identity proofing for these cases. The agency will not enforce these requirements in extreme dire-need situations, such as terminal cases or prisoner pre-release scenarios. SSA is currently developing a process that will require documentation and management approval to bypass the policy in such dire need cases.

Individuals who do not or cannot use the agency’s online my Social Security services to change their direct deposit information for any benefit will need to visit a Social Security office to process the change or can call 1-800-772-1213 to schedule an in-person appointment. The agency also recommends that individuals unable to apply online call to schedule an in-person appointment to begin and complete a claim for Retirement, Survivors, or Auxiliary (Spouse or Child) benefits in one interaction.

SSA recently required nearly all agency employees, including frontline employees in all offices throughout the country, to work in the office five days a week. This change ensures maximum staffing is available to support the stronger in-person identity proofing requirement.

The agency will continue to monitor and, if necessary, make adjustments to ensure it pays the right person the right amount at the right time while safeguarding the benefits and programs it administers. SSA plans to implement the Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service’s payment integrity service called Account Verification Service (AVS). AVS provides instant bank verification services to proactively and timely prevent fraud associated with direct deposit change requests. SSA will continue to fight fraud while balancing its program integrity responsibilities with delivering on its customer service mission to the American people.

People who do not already have a my Social Security account can create one at www.ssa.gov/myaccount/.

Stay up to date about SSA’s identity proofing requirements and exceptions at What to Know about Proving Your Identity | SSA.