Waiting In Schenectady

    People are waiting for service in Schenectady but, in truth, they're waiting everywhere.

Improving Service Easy For A Man Who Has Run A Much Bigger Organization

      From Federal News Network:

The new head of the Social Security Administration is looking to get call wait times down to “single digits,” as part of this strategy to make the agency a “digital-first organization.”

An SSA official told Federal News Network that the agency’s monthly average call wait time dropped from 30 minutes in January to just about 12 minutes in May, when including callers who were given a “callback” option and didn’t have to remain on hold.

SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano told employees in an all-hands meeting on Thursday that was agency’s “best performance” since it started tracking these metrics. But said he plans to cut call wait times to a fraction of that using artificial intelligence tools.

“We’re going to get that thing down to single digits,” he said.

Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive who led a financial tech company before joining the Trump administration, told employees he was “using AI before it was AI,” and oversaw financial organizations that processed a higher volume of payments than SSA does.

“Much bigger orgs, much bigger problems — but not as important. Can you see the difference? Here we do $1.5 trillion a year. In my last job, we did $2.5 trillion a day. This is more important than that, though,” he said. …

Finally

      Social Security can cut off disability benefits if there is medical improvement. However, claimants can ask that their disability benefits continue while they appeal. More than 40 years after benefit continuation came into being Social Security has finally created a form for claimants to use to request benefit continuation.

Social Security Won’t Be Hiring Anyway So …

     From Government Executive: 

Federal job applicants will soon be quizzed on their favorite Trump administration policy as part of the hiring process, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s new “merit hiring plan.” 

“How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” asks one of four essay questions that job seekers must answer if they are seeking any federal position GS-5 or above. “Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired. …

What’s The Backup Plan?

     From CBS:

Frank Bisignano, commissioner of the Social Security Administration, told CBS News that he believes technology, and specifically artificial intelligence, could be the key to improving his agency's customer service, despite recent changes that have prompted concern among some of the nearly 69 million Americans that receive Social Security each month. 

"We're bringing a massive technology effort to transform the servicing agenda," Bisignano said. "We're gonna bring AI into the phone system...I intend it to be completed this year."  …

      From the New York Times:

… “The technology we’re building today is not sufficient to get [to Artificial General Intelligence or A.G.I. which would be needed to switch Social Security phone service mostly to A.I.]”,  said Nick Frosst, a founder of the A.I. start-up Cohere who previously worked as a researcher at Google and studied under the most revered A.I. researcher of the last 50 years. “What we are building now are things that take in words and predict the next most likely word, or they take in pixels and predict the next most likely pixel. That’s very different from what you and I do.”

In a recent survey of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society that includes some of the most respected researchers in the field, more than three-quarters of respondents said the methods used to build today’s technology were unlikely to lead to A.G.I. …

         The AI phone system that Social Security has tried to implement has been a complete failure so far. I’m not aware of any institution that has an AI phone system that would come close to what Social Security needs. There is good reason to believe that no such system will be in the offing any time soon, if ever. My question is, what’s your backup plan, Mr. Bisignano?

Visiting Offices In New Jersey

 

Rulings Rescinded

      From a notice posted by Social Security in the Federal Register:

By this notice we are rescinding the following [Social Security Rulings]:

• SSR 83-33: Titles II and XVI: Determining Whether Work Is  Substantial Gainful Activity--Employees;
• SSR 83-34: Titles II and XVI: Determining Whether Work Is  Substantial Gainful Activity--Self-Employed Persons;
• SSR 83-35: Titles II and XVI: Averaging of Earnings in Determining Whether Work Is Substantial Gainful Activity;
• SSR 84-25: Titles II and XVI: Determination of Substantial  Gainful Activity If Substantial Work Activity Is Discontinued or Reduced--Unsuccessful Work Attempt; and
• SSR 84-26: Titles II and XVI: Deducting Impairment-Related Work Expenses From Earnings In Determinations As To Substantial Gainful Activity Under Titles II And XVI And As To Countable Earned Income Under Title XVI. ….

     The stated reason for rescinding the SSRs is that subsequent regulations have superseded them. 

Dudek Pens Op Ed

      Former Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has written an Op Ed for the New York Post about the “media’s Social Security hysteria”. It’s about what you’d expect.

Memorial Day 2025

 

South And Midwest Rely More On Social Security

     From Southern and Midwestern districts are the most vulnerable to Social Security cuts and disruptions posted by the Economic Policy Institute (click on image to view full size):

 

Recording Of A Small Part Of Bisignano’s Talk To Staff Surfaces

     If this was the worst issue with Bisignano I wouldn’t be concerned but here’s the part where Bisignano talks about googling his new job. There are worse things than sounding a bit goofy. I’m afraid we’ll see those worse things.

Here’s An Idea For The Commissioner

      From Social Security’s Office of Inspector

 While SSA has made progress implementing corrective actions for both the OASDI and SSI programs, the Agency did not demonstrate improvements to payment integrity or achieve its tolerable improper payment rate for the SSI program. The SSI improper payment rate increased from 9.41 percent (approximately $5.3 billion) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 to 10.62 percent (approximately $6.5 billion) in FY 2023.

According to SSA, the Agency’s reliance on self-reporting by beneficiaries, recipients, and their representative payees—who are required to notify SSA when a change occurs affecting their SSI eligibility or payment amounts—leads to many improper payments.  Failure to report these changes continues to be a primary cause of overpayments. 

One of the leading causes of overpayments to SSI recipients is recipients’ unreported resources in financial accounts that exceed allowable amounts. SSA has tools, such as the Access to Financial Institutions (AFI) program, to help identify excess resources.  Using AFI, SSA verifies alleged bank account balances with financial institutions and searches for undisclosed accounts at geographically relevant locations.  SSA uses AFI when it processes initial SSI applications and periodic eligibility redeterminations.

However, according to SSA, in FY 2023, 89 percent of overpayments resulting from excess resources in financial accounts occurred because of recipients’ changes after SSA approved their initial SSI applications or completed eligibility redeterminations. 

OIG estimates SSA could have prevented approximately $2 billion in overpayments in FY 2023 had it performed AFI searches between approving recipients’ initial applications and completing redeterminations.

OIG previously recommended SSA conduct a study to expand the use of AFI.  SSA has not implemented this recommendation.

     The problem with implementing this is probably the delay it would cause but, hey, it’s only SSI so it wouldn’t matter to a Republican if the benefits are never paid! 

Bisignano Doesn't Like Leaks But They're Sure Happening

     ABC News has obtained an audio recording of the meeting that Frank Bisignano had with Social Security staff yesterday. They have posted excerpts. It sounds like it was a rambling performance. I'll offer a few quotes here but if you weren't part of that meeting you probably want to look at the whole ABC piece.

... "So, I get a phone call and it's about Social Security. And I'm really, I'm really not, I swear I'm not looking for a job," Bisignano said, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by ABC News. "And I'm like, 'Well, what am I going to do?' So, I'm Googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I'm one of the great Googlers on the East Coast."

"I'm like, 'What the heck's the commissioner of Social Security?'" said Bisignano, who now oversees one of the largest federal agencies that's responsible for distributing retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to more than 70 million Americans.

"Put that as the headline for the Post: 'Great Googler in Chief. Chief in Googler' or whatever," said Bisignano, who throughout the meeting repeatedly bemoaned media leaks from within the agency. ...

 "Are we having fun yet? Are we OK?" he asked those on the call. ...

Bisignano told the managers that they needed to believe that DOGE was "helping to make things better" even if "it may not feel that way." ...

"Did you guys know there was a protest against me? Who knows there was a protest against me?" he said. "I like that protest -- I want to prove them so wrong, man, this is going to be most fun I ever had." ...

     By the way, does anyone know whether Bisignano had any briefings from career people at Social Security between the time he was nominated and confirmed? I don't have any experience with these things. I would like to think that would be standard but Bisignano sounds like he came into the job cold.

Bisignano Repeats What He Knows To Be Outrageous Bull

      This is unbelievable. Just watch and listen to this interview with Frank Bisignano on Fox “News”. Never in my life did I imagine that a Social Security Commissioner could behave like this. He deserves no benefit of the doubt from anyone after this shocking performance.

     Note to Bisignano: If you’re still at Social Security when the 2026 election rolls around, which I doubt, don’t even think about hanging around if the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives. It won’t be pretty for someone who has engaged in such behavior. In fact it won’t be pretty when Bisignano does a hearing with House Ways and Means now.

This Guy Is A Star Manager?

      From Federal News Network:

… SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano told managers in a largely unscripted 90-minute address Wednesday that he has no plans for a Reduction in Force, but said AI will be a “great enabler” that helps employees handle a growing workload with its lowest headcount in 50 years.

“I have no intent to RIF people,” Bisignano told managers. “If I wake up and find out we can do all our work with 20,000 people — which I can’t see that right now — we’ll be 20,000. If I wake up and say, ‘We need 80,000,’ we’ll be 80,000. I’ve got to determine what the right staffing level is.” …

“We’ve got a lot of turmoil. I think we reassigned a lot of people,” Bisignano said. “I guarantee you, we’re going to get the job done, and my dream is to not have to let people go,” Bisignano said. “If we can’t get the job done, that’s a different problem. You guys don’t want people who don’t give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, do you?” …

When it comes to rolling out new tools, Bisignano said his first tech priority is to deploy AI on the agency’s phone lines.

“The phone has to have artificial intelligence to do the work. We can all do this in a year, and then your jobs will be more enriching,” he said. “The reason we get so many phone calls is because half the people have to call twice.” …

Bisignano said he’s open to asking the Trump administration money for IT modernization, or more employees to lead his tech modernization plans, if the agency doesn’t already have the resources to do it. …

“A previous commissioner likes to talk about why we’re going to break this thing — why this thing can’t work. ‘It’s like the least amount of people we’ve ever had, it must break,’” Bisignano said. “You can’t just throw stuff out with me and make something up.” …

     There’s a lot one could say about this. There’s the casual assumption that technology will save the day when’s there’s zero proof that it will or that you can afford it if it can. I’ve had the misfortune of trying to deal with a couple of large financial institutions lately. Whatever AI they were using was little more than annoying. Want to know account balance or payment due? They may be able to help you with AI. Anything else, forget it.  Can anyone point me to ANY large institution that has a well functioning AI system that really does the job of answering their phones for anything other than the simplest transactions?  He completely underestimates just how complex the calls coming in to Social Security actually are. The insinuation that employees aren’t giving an honest day’s work doesn’t endear you to agency employees who are working their tails off. He’s spouting off as if he understands the work and the workers when he doesn’t. 

Bisignano Getting Big Tax Break

      From Jacobin:

As the Trump administration hollows out the country’s safety net for retirees and those with disabilities, the agency’s new chief has just been approved for a massive tax break for his Wall Street riches, according to new ethics documents reviewed by the Lever. …

To comply with federal ethics law, Bisignano has agreed to sell his shares in Fiserv, which are currently worth roughly $484 million. Because of a special loophole in the tax code for government officials, Bisignano will be able to indefinitely defer any capital gains tax on the divestment — meaning he may never have to pay taxes on the enormous windfall.

The exact value of Bisignano’s tax break is not clear from the ethics disclosure, but previous tax breaks for comparable divestments have been worth tens of millions of dollars. …

Filing Early Due To Fear

      From the New York Times:

The morning after his 67th birthday, Marty McGowan filed for Social Security. That wasn’t his original plan. He had intended to wait until he was 70 to claim benefits, in exchange for a heftier payment that would have yielded an extra $800 a month.

But like other retirees in recent months, he was watching the Trump administration’s shake-up at the Social Security Administration during a time when the broader economic outlook appeared increasingly uncertain. Concerns about the economy and access to benefits nudged him to file earlier than he had anticipated, even if it might cost him over the long run.

He wasn’t the only one: An additional 276,000 retirees claimed benefits on their earnings record this fiscal year through April, according to the Urban Institute, a research group, a 13 percent jump from the same period a year ago. Officials inside the Social Security Administration called the rise “dramatic,” and though there were some other reasons for the surge, program experts say anxiety appeared to play a meaningful role. …

Social Security Organizational Chart

 

Click on image to view full size or go to this site to view it in a more readable format that I can't reproduce here

O’Malley Cited For Hatch Act Violation

      From The Hill:

Former Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Martin O’Malley violated the Hatch Act during an interview with a local news outlet in North Carolina last year, a U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) investigation found Friday.  …

The complaint pointed to O’Malley’s seven-minute interview with WPTF Morning News based in Raleigh, N.C.  …

The former Maryland governor then claimed he “certainly can’t tell anybody who to vote for, but I can tell you that the proposals that are coming from Donald Trump would quickly deplete Social Security, and we wouldn’t be able to pass it on to our kids as our grandparents passed it on to us.”  …

The Office of Special Counsel wrote that the “only plausible conclusion to draw from Mr. O’Malley’s comments is that, while speaking in his capacity as SSA Commissioner, he explicitly told listeners that they must vote against President Trump to satisfy their responsibility to preserve Social Security.”  …

     This seems almost quaint considering what’s happened since but he wasn’t supposed to do it. 

LOL: “Bisignano Coming To Dislike DOGE.” AI Not Ready For Prime Time. Who Could Have Predicted?

       From the Washington Post:

The U.S. DOGE Service arrived at the Social Security Administration this year determined to slash staff and root out what it claimed was widespread fraud and wasteful spending — a mission Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team has pursued across the government.
But as of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months. …

Social Security is poorly positioned to handle the influx [of new retirement claims], according to several staffers, as well as records obtained by The Post. Thousands of employees have taken the Trump administration’s early resignation offer or its early retirement offer, depleting the workforce and leaving some offices wholly bereft of staff, emails show. A DOGE-led move to slash staffing levels spurred many senior administrators scared of getting fired to accept reassignment to lower-level field office positions, slowing claims processing further as those employees are trained, according to employees and records. …

Bisignano is coming to dislike DOGE and hopes to minimize the team’s influence, the officials said. Another official, however, said Bisignano wants to “partner” with DOGE. …

DOGE staffers came to Social Security vowing to end fraudulent claims filed by scammers and grifters, and convinced that much of that activity was perpetrated over the phone, The Post previously reported. Career staff attempted to explain that wasn’t true, but to no avail, according to three current and former employees familiar with the matter. DOGE proposed ending phone service for retirement and disability claims, then narrowed its proposal after backlash from older claims recipients, advocates and lawmakers — then abandoned the idea.
Staff on the IT side developed a solution they hoped would pacify DOGE: A three-day hold on phone calls to allow extra checking for fraud, the employees said. Everyone, from rank-and-file career staff up to Dudek, knew the phone fraud check was not needed, the employees said. But they did it anyway.
“People lacked the fortitude to tell DOGE there was no fraud because they were afraid to lose their jobs,” one former high-ranking official said, referring specifically to claims filed by telephone. “They knew there was no fraud.” …

When a Post reporter called the [agency]phone line Friday afternoon, it took eight attempts to get transferred to an agent. The AI bot asked the reporter several times to end the call and gave unrelated information about a cost-of-living adjustment, Medicare Part B’s premium and benefits available to people after the retirement age.