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.