Trump Administration's Childish Passion For Undoing Anything Joe Biden Did Extends To Sabotaging Its Own AI Efforts

     From Time:

...  The Biden Administration moved aggressively in its final 18 months to convince more than 200 AI technology experts to forgo the private sector for the federal workforce, through what was called the ”National AI Talent Surge.” The new hires were deployed throughout the government and used AI to find ways to reduce Social Security wait times, simplify tax filings, and help veterans track their medical care. Most of them were quickly pushed out by the new administration, multiple former federal officials tell TIME.

The shift, say the former officials, represents an enormous waste of federal resources, as agencies across the Trump Administration are looking to draw workers with the very experience they just let go. It also means agencies may have to increasingly rely on costlier outside companies for that expertise. ...

In early 2024, Biden officials hired Angelica Quirarte, who had spent years pitching tech experts on becoming public servants. Quirarte says that coders and engineers are natural problem-solvers and are attracted to the challenge of working with huge data sets that can improve services for millions of people. ...

In less than a year, Quirarte tells TIME, she helped hire about 250 AI experts. After Trump’s actions, she estimates about 10% of that cohort are still with the federal government.

“It’s going to be really hard” for the Trump administration to hire more tech workers after such haphazard layoffs, Quirarte says. “It’s so chaotic.” ...

    These are not serious people. 

A Preview Of What AI Could Do For Social Security

     From Rest of World:

When Josélia de Brito, a former sugarcane worker from a remote town in northeast Brazil, filed for her retirement benefits through the mandated government app, she expected her claim would be processed quickly. Instead, her request was instantly turned down because the system identified her as a man. ...

It was especially frustrating for de Brito, who had been requesting sick pay for years via the National Social Security Institute’s artificial intelligence-powered app, Meu INSS. ... [E]ven minor errors in her claims filed through the app had led to numerous rejections, with few options for recourse. ...

Brazil’s social security institute, known as INSS, added AI to its app in 2018 in an effort to cut red tape and speed up claims. The office, known for its long lines and wait times, had around 2 million pending requests for everything from doctor’s appointments to sick pay to pensions to retirement benefits at the time. While the AI-powered tool has since helped process thousands of basic claims, it has also rejected requests from hundreds of people like de Brito — who live in remote areas and have little digital literacy — for minor errors. ...

Digital Social Security Cards

     From ThinkAdvisor:

The Social Security Administration said Friday that starting this summer, "my Social Security" portal users will be provided digital access to their Social Security number — offering "a modernized, secure and accessible alternative to the traditional physical SSN card."

The digital SSN feature "will allow account holders to conveniently display their SSN, when needed, for reasons other than handling Social Security matters," the agency said. 

"This enhancement will provide individuals who have forgotten their SSN or misplaced their SSN cards a simple solution allowing them to securely view their SSN online," SSA said. "This will reduce their need for an in-person visit and/or having to wait to receive their SSN card through the mail." ...

    I don't understand how this is going to work when someone needs to show their Social Security card in order to get a job or a drivers license.

The Odd Couple

      From a piece in Business Insider on Leland Dudek and Frank Bisignano:

… Bisignano's confirmation is awaiting a full Senate vote, which is expected after the chamber votes on nominees for multiple diplomatic positions.  …

Some who spoke with BI expressed surprise that he would join the Trump administration. An archived biography from First Data, where he served as chair and CEO, said he's "a strong supporter of diversity" and helped create affinity groups for women and LGBTQ+ employees at the company. He's donated to candidates on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, and Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, records show. In May 2019, Bisignano gave $125,000 to the Trump Victory PAC and another $83,900 to the Republican National Committee. …

A person who has spoken with Dudek said they believed some of his bluster might be a smoke screen. They said Dudek, like previous commissioners, said he feared that the system was on the brink of collapse and worried about people not receiving their benefits — a similar sentiment to what Dudek expressed in a recording obtained by ProPublica. They feel that he thinks he's doing damage control and running interference between DOGE and everyone else.

"It felt like a bunch of 6-year-olds with too much sugar had been put in charge of the agency and were just kind of running all over the place, randomly disconnecting and reconnecting things in different ways," the former SSA manager said.

Some of the decisions at Fiserv that played out on Bisignano's watch appear to have rankled some of his employees. A former Fiserv client project manager said that return-to-office policies rolled out late last year under Bisignano contributed to his decision to leave. The former manager described the culture as "a bit of a sweatshop." …

Bisignano "loves his reputation for fixing things," said one person who worked closely with him, "not for burning things down." …

     I’m pretty sure that if he knew now what’s he’s going to learn in the next few months that Bisignano would not want to be Commissioner of Social Security. The impressive knowledge and skill which he has demonstrated in his previous career will be completely inadequate to the task because he’s faced with a truly impossible task. 

Default Overpayment Recovery Rate To Be 50%

      Newly issued Social Security Emergency Message EM 25029 indicates that the default overpayment recovery rate will be 50%, not 100% as feared. It had been 10% for about the last year. Also, those already told they had a 10% recovery rate won’t see that rate rise.

Stephen Evangelista Appointed Social Security’s Deputy Commissioner for Operations

      According to a Social Security Administration blog.

Less Is More?

      From the Washington Post:

Democrats, after weeks of struggling to find a message that resonates with ordinary Americans while President Donald Trump dominates the news, are beginning to settle on one: the allegation that Trump and his allies are crippling Social Security. …

“For much of the country, Washington might as well be Mars for all the connection it has to them,” Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), the top Democrat on the committee that oversees Social Security, said in an interview. “But Social Security is something where there is connective tissue between the government and the people.” …

Michael Astrue, who led the Social Security Administration under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama — and says he voted for Trump — sharply criticized cuts to the agency by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think you have a group of very immature people coming out of Silicon Valley bro culture, and they have decided federal agencies are filled with bad people doing bad things, and if you go in and hack away, and you don’t have to know what you are doing, you can improve it because less is more,” Astrue said. …

The White House has shown uncharacteristic concern that the Democratic message on Social Security could resonate. The president has made clear to top aides that he does not like seeing the agency in the news so often and so negatively, one senior Social Security official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk about a sensitive issue. …

Former Associate Commissioner Speaks Out

      From NPR:

… Laura Haltzel was the former associate commissioner for the SSA's Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics in the agency's Maryland headquarters. Rather than volunteer for reassignment and face more uncertainty, she decided to take an offer of early retirement.

Haltzel said there are problems with the expectation that workers in roles like hers would be able to quickly jump in and replace the thousands of frontline workers that have left. She called the plan a "sort of mythical idea."

"We've lost an extreme amount of expertise and knowledge that we simply are not going to get back," she said. "Let's say somebody in my team, who is a statistician, [you] suddenly turn them into a claims processor. It takes two years of training for someone to become proficient at taking a Social Security claim because of the complexity of the law. That is not something that you can simply plug somebody into overnight and keep up at the same pace as it had been operating previously."

"People are taking reassignments out of fear that they will have no jobs because the entire economy in the D.C. area now is affected by a loss of employment across the federal landscape," she said. "And for all of these individuals to find new jobs in the private sector, that's simply not a reality, particularly from the Social Security Administration, for which there is no private equivalent."  …

Haltzel said she's deeply concerned about the loss of expertise that has left the SSA in recent weeks. She said her former team, which analyzed whether the agency was doing a good job serving beneficiaries, has been cut by more than half.

"I hope that we're able to sustain a basic minimum of knowledge in order to maintain the functioning of the agency," Haltzel said. "But frankly, given that they have no control over who takes the reassignments and who simply retires and leaves, they could lose individuals where we are one person deep in knowledge. And once that knowledge is gone, it is gone. These people will not come back." …