Access to Social Security benefits has never been easy, and we found again and again that access had gotten worse over a number of metrics. The new report, coauthored with fellow academics Callie Freitag and Matthew Borus, is based on interviews with 52 attorneys and other specialists who help people get disability benefits.
The Social Security Administration has instructed employees newly assigned to answering phones to tell callers expressing suicidal thoughts that suicide is "one option," raising concerns from employees and experts in the field who called the approach unorthodox. SSA recently began shifting new swaths of its workforce to phone answering duty, including those who normally receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency's technology and work in the agency's finances unit.
Enter Frank Bisignano. The Jamie Dimon protegee had a storied career in banking, and was appointed to lead SSA last spring (he has since added the job of IRS CEO to his resume, which you can read about here.) But the changes he has quickly enacted at SSA-drawing heavily on his time in the private sector-are real, and they're impressing even the Administration's fiercest critics.
Bisignano previously spent most of his career in large financial institutions and fintech companies, including serving as CEO of both Fiserv and First Data. Earlier in his career, he was co-chief operating officer of J.P. Morgan Chase and CEO of its mortgage banking unit. Now, Bisignano is running the SSA and IRS much like the private sector firms he has made a career of fixing, according to Tully.
The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Finance Committee are asking the Social Security Administration to elaborate on a recent court filing which stated that SSA doesn't know the full extent of agency data accessed and shared by the Department of Government Efficiency. In a letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, Sens. Michael Crapo, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked for a briefing on the recent court disclosure, writing that "we take very seriously the SSA's stewardship of any personally identifiable information (PII) in its purview."
Even worse than that, the DOJ noted in its filing, email evidence shows that a pair of DOGE employees at SSA were approached by a political advocacy group asking them to help the group find evidence of voter fraud in a bid to overturn state-level elections. One of the DOGE employees even signed a "voter data agreement," the contents of which weren't explained in the filing, with the unnamed group.
What is the most middle name in the United States? Erin Davis grew curious enough to find the answers in data. For females, the most middle names are Rae, Marie, and Mae. For males, the most middle names are Lee, Kumar, and Ray. The answers are straightforward, but finding the answers was more roundabout, because you can't just dig into the annual baby names dataset from the Social Security Administration. Instead, Davis used voter registration data, which comes with its own challenges.
But the OIG report shows how this metric is dramatically lower than the amount of time it takes to get ahold of an SSA employee by waiting on hold or requesting a callback. The average speed of answer includes people who wait on hold to speak with an agent until they get to that person or, critically, opt to get a callback. The agency counts callers that immediately request a callback as having a wait time of zero, bringing down the average.
The Social Security Administration wants to halve the number of people that go to its field offices in the 2026 fiscal year. More than 31 million people visited SSA field offices over the last fiscal year. Now, the agency aims to have 50% fewer visits - or no more than 15 million total - in fiscal 2026, which began in October, according to internal planning documents viewed by Nextgov/FCW.
The Social Security Administration announced a new leadership roster and agency reorganization on Wednesday, installing several industry executives from organizations including the National Rifle Association and X with no government experience. Many of the recent additions to Commissioner Frank Bisignano's leadership team have never worked in the government at all. Although SSA released the list of executives this week, those helming the roles aren't necessarily new to the jobs.
Public servants are entrusted to assist people, not exploit them," Foley said. "This was a brazen abuse of power by a federal employee who used his position and access to sensitive information to prey on a vulnerable woman who had just lost her job. This kind of predatory behavior has no place in public service, or anywhere else.
Commissioner Frank Bisignano pointed out that with a new administration in office and noticeable improvement in performance metrics due to strong leadership and technology, concerns about a customer service crisis at the SSA are unfounded.
The Social Security Administration will officially stop issuing paper checks, transitioning to electronic funds transfers starting September 30, 2025, to improve efficiency and security.
The Social Security Administration is switching up operations by temporarily reassigning up to 1,000 field office employees to teleservice work to improve customer service.
