Chatbot For SSA Employees

      From Nextgov/FCW:

The Social Security Administration is introducing a new chatbot for employees powered by generative artificial intelligence, according to an internal email obtained by Nextgov/FCW. 

“This initiative aligns with our commitment to leverage innovative technology to improve efficiency, support our mission and provide a secured way to use GenAI,” read a Wednesday email to staff announcing the new “Agency Support Companion.” …

SSA told staff that the new chatbot is meant to help with content creation and summarization, as well as research and coding assistance. Staff have to watch a four-minute video with guidelines and best practices to access it.

The new tool uses an OpenAI model and wasn’t trained or fine-tuned on any SSA data, according to an agency FAQ document obtained by Nextgov/FCW. No testing was done internally to assess the application against SSA-specific questions, it said.

The chatbot was trained on data up to October 2023, according to the FAQ, which also warned that employees should validate its responses and not feed it personally identifiable information. …

     Sounds a little vague on how this is to be used. Could it turn out to be a solution in search of a problem? 

DOGE Loses In Federal Court Again

      A District Court in Maryland has issued a preliminary injunction forbidding DOGE access to non-anonymized  Social Security records.

It’s A Zero Sum Game

      From David Weaver writing for The Hill:

… The start-up administrative costs of the Social Security Fairness Act [which eliminated the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset] are plausibly about $200 million. When Congress was considering the full-year continuing resolution in March, it simply chose not to provide the Social Security Administration with sufficient funding to implement the law. As a result, Congress has created a zero-sum environment at the agency: additional service to one group means less service to another. 

In the months since enactment of the SSFA, the Social Security Administration has taken an additional 146,000 new benefit applications related to the new law. That means 146,000 other Americans did not have their applications considered. Additionally, the agency has had to field 450,000 calls (6,000-7,000 per day) from the public requiring agency staff to explain the new law and resolve benefit problems. That means 450,000 other Americans did not get their Social Security problems resolved.  

 

Most alarmingly, the agency’s automation efforts for retroactive payments fell short. Social Security indicated that automation would result in these payments being deposited in bank accounts “by the end of March.” After its automation runs in March, however, there were still 500,000 to 700,000 cases to be processed. These will have to be handled manually over time.   …

The Social Security Administration plans to prioritize this manual workload, but all that means is that up to 700,000 other Americans in the agency’s very large payment backlog will not have their benefit payments processed.  …

Hearing Backlog Starts To Inch Up As Available ALJs Dip Below 1,000

 

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Waste Of Scarce Resources

      From  “Fact Sheet” issued by the White House yesterday:

Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum aimed at stopping illegal aliens and other ineligible people from obtaining Social Security Act benefits.

• The Memorandum directs the administration to ensure ineligible aliens are not receiving funds from Social Security Act programs.
  • This includes promulgating guidance and prioritizing enforcement actions against grantees or subgrantees that do not: verify eligibility, stop payments to deceased or ineligible payees, or otherwise prevent ineligible aliens from receiving funds.
• It expands the Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) fraud prosecutor program to at least 50 U.S. Attorney Offices and establishes a Medicare and Medicaid fraud-prosecution program in 15 U.S. Attorney Offices.
• The Memorandum requires the SSA Inspector General to investigate earnings reports for individuals aged 100 or older with mismatched SSA records, to combat identity theft.
• It also directs the SSA to consider whether to reinstate the use of civil monetary penalties against individuals who engage in Social Security fraud, an effort that has been paused for several years.

PROTECTING TAXPAYER DOLLARS: President Trump believes that taxpayer-funded benefits should be provided only to eligible persons and must not encourage or reward illegal immigration to the United States.

• Policing Social Security Act fraud is critical because the Act contains not only traditional Social Security provided to older Americans, but also unemployment insurance, disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, TANF, and other programs.
• The surge in illegal immigration caused by the previous Administration is siphoning dollars and essential services from American citizens while state and local budgets grow increasingly strained.
  • Biden oversaw a sharp increase in the number of immigrants given Social Security Numbers (SSNs), with more than 2 million illegal aliens assigned SSNs in fiscal year 2024 alone.
• The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) calculated that American taxpayers spend at least $182 billion annually to cover the costs incurred by the presence of 20 million illegal aliens and their children, which includes $66.4 billion in Federal expenses plus an additional $115.6 billion in state and local expenses.
  • FAIR estimated that nearly a million illegal aliens hold stolen identifications or fraudulent SSNs.
  • Although some illegal aliens do pay taxes, those tax contributions come nowhere near covering the costs they impose on the populace; FAIR estimates illegal aliens are still a $150.7 billion net fiscal burden.
• The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biden Administration’s open borders agenda, which sought to provide Medicaid-funded emergency services to illegal aliens, has cost Federal and state taxpayers more than $16.2 billion. Joe Biden also tried to make illegal aliens eligible for Obamacare until he was stopped in a lawsuit. 

I Thought Social Security Was Supposed To Be Apolitical

      A thread of tweets from the Social Security Administration this evening:

Former President Joe Biden [who is expected to make a speech on Social Security this evening] is lying to Americans. 

Here are the facts:

1️⃣President Trump has repeatedly promised to protect Social Security and ensure higher-take home pay for seniors by ending taxation on Social Security benefits.

2️⃣The SSA has not permanently closed any field offices and 50% of the technology department has not been laid off.

3️⃣SSA is taking commonsense steps to transform how we serve the public - last month, we spent $16.5 million to modernize telephone services nationwide. We’re developing cutting-edge, AI-powered tools to streamline simple tasks.

4️⃣A SSA Inspector General report released while Joe Biden was President found $72 billion in improper payments from fiscal years 2015 through 2022.

5️⃣Over 2 million illegal aliens were assigned SSNs in fiscal year 2024 alone.

Good Lord!

      This is from a Washington Post article. You really need to read the whole thing. This is most disturbing.

Representatives of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have sought for weeks to get around a court order barring their access to sensitive data and internal systems at the Social Security Administration, prompting career staff to repeatedly resist their efforts, according to a half dozen people familiar with the DOGE team’s actions and records obtained by The Washington Post.
The battle inside the agency led the Justice Department to intervene to deny DOGE access to the data, even as the Trump administration installed and promoted DOGE-friendly leaders to dramatically cut back services at Social Security. It involved staff, from rank-and-file employees to senior leaders, including acting commissioner Leland Dudek, who was appointed to his position after displaying public loyalty to DOGE. …

At the same time, Dudek mistakenly let one of the DOGE representatives into a Social Security database last week, violating the court order, according to a person familiar with events who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. That error led a federal judge to summon Dudek for a hearing Tuesday at federal court in Baltimore, but the Trump administration said in a filing late Monday that he would no longer appear. …

At first, officials obeyed the courts.
Immediately after Hollander issued her order, the agency cut off DOGE staffers from all systems, according to employees and records obtained by The Post. The compliance came at the direction of Michael Russo, then the chief information officer, who was recommended for the job by Frank Bisignano, President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the permanent leader of Social Security. …

But Russo’s swift action did not go over well with the Trump administration. He was reassigned in late March to a “senior adviser” position focused on “IT Modernization” in the office of the commissioner, according to a memo obtained by The Post. He was replaced as chief information officer by Scott Coulter, a New York-based hedge fund manager and a member of Musk’s DOGE team, according to the memo and court filings. …

Meanwhile, Mark Steffensen — another Trump appointee and DOGE ally serving as acting general counsel — was tasked with determining whether DOGE representatives should be allowed to access Social Security data. Steffensen, a former top financial executive, had assumed his role as a senior adviser at Social Security at Bisignano’s recommendation on Feb. 24, according to another memo obtained by The Post. …  

Soon, Steffensen was fighting with career lawyers at Social Security.
Attorneys in the office of general counsel wanted to draft agencywide guidance that would comply with the judge’s order, setting strict rules for how staff could interact with DOGE representatives, according to a person briefed on the events. But Steffensen initially wanted the lawyers to issue a memo giving DOGE access to Social Security data, the person said.
None of the career employees would agree to Steffensen’s plan, the person said. So he began circumventing the lawyers by telling DOGE representatives to keep working on their projects anyway, according to the person and records obtained by The Post. …  

 Near the end of March, the office of general counsel issued its guidance on DOGE’s data access at Social Security, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Post. The final version appeared to align with career lawyers’ viewpoint. It said that “DOGE team members are restricted … from accessing, viewing, or otherwise working with” any “information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity,” including “any nonpublic datasets that are aggregated or deidentified but could be used to identify a person.” … 

  In early April, lawyers with the Justice Department were called in to give their opinion, too, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Department lawyers told Steffensen that under no circumstances should DOGE be allowed inside the agency’s data and that Social Security must follow the judge’s order, one of the people said. …

 But DOGE kept up the pressure and, according to current and former officials, tried unsuccessfully to get Steffensen fired for failing to get them access. Members of the DOGE team also sought an exemption from the judge for several projects, the officials said. It is unclear if the judge agreed.
In recent weeks, Social Security hired a new DOGE team member, but Dudek — not realizing this staffer was a member of the DOGE team — granted him access to some of the agency’s data, violating the judge’s order, according to records and a person familiar with the matter.
Once Dudek realized his mistake, he removed the DOGE staffer from the agency’s systems, the person said.

     As I have said before, I salute those who have fought the good fight to protect Social Security’s records. You deserve gold medals when these evil times are past. 

A New Affidavit From Tiffany Flick And I Don’t Understand It

      Social Security has posted an affidavit from Tiffany Flick in the case concerning DOGE access to agency databases. I don’t understand it. It seems to be saying that no names of living people have been intentionally added to the Death Master File. Maybe she’s hinting that Social Security didn’t do it; the Department of Commerce did it.