New SSA chief praises DOGE for ‘making things better’

The Social Security Administration’s new commissioner, Frank Bisignano, told managers in a meeting yesterday that he represents “consistency” and “stability” for the agency and that the presence of the Department of Government Efficiency at SSA has been a good thing.

“Social Security is not going anywhere,” Bisignano said during the meeting, which Nextgov/FCW obtained a recording of, promising to improve morale at the agency while acknowledging recent “turmoil.”

A new entrant to government service, having spent his prior career in the financial services industry, Bisignano told attendees at the meeting that he had to Google his new job when he was offered it.

“I looked up like, I’ll be honest,” he said. “I’m like, what the heck's the Commissioner of Social Security?”

“So I’m Googling Social Security. One of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East coast. Put that as the headline for the Post,” he told managers at the meeting, during which he frequently noted his desire to prevent news leaks. 

“One of my main jobs is not having newspaper articles saying we’re a problem,” said Bisignano. 

An SSA official said Bisignano was “clearly” making a joke about needing to Google the responsibilities of his position. 

The Senate confirmed him earlier this month despite accusations that he’d lied during his confirmation hearing. Democrats cited his reputation for cutting workforces in the private sector in their opposition to his nomination.

“Commissioner Bisignano’s proven success in the financial services industry uniquely positions him to lead the Trump Administration’s commonsense efforts to modernize the agency and improve its efficiency,” Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, told Nextgov/FCW after it reached out to SSA for comment.

The career finance executive spoke Wednesday about his intentions concerning further workforce cuts, the use of technology at the agency and more. His tenure follows months of upheaval at SSA, which has indeed placed the agency in the news for customer service problems. 

Recently, the agency reversed an anti-fraud policy that was slowing down retirement processing and hurting customer service after it found essentially no fraud.

That policy was put in place after leaders at the Department of Government Efficiency and White House repeated false and misleading claims about SSA phone lines being riddled with fraud.

Bisignano defended DOGE during the meeting, telling employees that, “your bias has to be — because mine is — [that] DOGE is helping make things better.”

“It may not feel that way, but don’t believe everything you read,” he added. 

SSA has also been reassigning staff across the agency, moving many to the front lines. It has also made draft plans to cut its workforce by thousands, even as its staffing was already at a 25-year low in fiscal 2022. Many staff have already left the agency through the administration's deferred resignation program or early retirement.

“I have no intent to RIF people,” he said Wednesday, using the acronym for reduction in force, a government term for layoffs. But he didn’t rule out further cuts.

“If I wake up and we can do all our work with 20,000 people — which I can't see that right about now — well, then we'll be 20,000. If I wake up and see, we need 80,000, we'll be 80,000,” he said. “I gotta determine what the right staffing level is. But nobody asked me to come do this job and RIF people.”

The agency announced plans in February to shrink its workforce to 50,000 employees, down from about 57,000, first through voluntary departures and then through layoffs. Downsizing the federal workforce has been a priority for the Trump administration.

An SSA official told Nextgov/FCW that Bisignano is visiting offices and meeting employees to hear their ideas for how the agency can better serve customers in-person, on the telephone and online. 

The new commissioner said that technology and automation are top priorities, arguing that SSA needs to use artificial intelligence on high-labor tasks, move off of paper and push people to do things online instead of come into SSA offices. 

He pointed to the lengthy disability determination process as one where “there’s a ton of things that AI can apply to move it along faster.”

Right now, it takes applicants about seven months to get an initial decision for disability benefits. People who appeal that decision wait another eight months, and those that request a hearing wait over nine months. 

Thirty thousand people died waiting for their benefit determinations in fiscal 2023, Nextgov/FCW previously reported. The disability policy landscape is extremely complicated, making it difficult to administer, and the agency has also gotten less funding over the last decade.

“Tech’s got to be the great enabler, right,” said Bisignano. “We’re going to invest.”

Jack Smalligan, who formerly worked at the Office of Management and Budget and recently helped write a report on SSA and AI, and is also a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute, previously told Nextgov/FCW that AI could help the agency. But the technology also comes with risks like bias and staffing reductions, which could push the agency to use tools that aren’t ready, he warned.

“I think we should get a lot more done on the web,” Bisignano told managers. “You’re competing with experiences that people have on Amazon.”

“I mean, the best thing that could happen is we answer the phone in one minute, a lot of it through technology. We turned around our claims, whether they were disability or retirement, at much different speed, right? Our web was unbelievable,” he said.

The agency previously shuttered the office that had overhauled the SSA website, putting employees on administrative leave. SSA later brought some of those staff back, installing them elsewhere throughout the agency.