DOGE has ignored urgently needed reforms and upgrades at the Social Security Administration, according to dozens of insiders and 15 hours of candid interviews with the former acting chief of the agency, who admits he sometimes made things worse.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/49607175

  • Missed Opportunity: Some Social Security officials said they welcomed DOGE — the agency needs a technological overhaul — only to see DOGE ignore them and prioritize quick (often empty) wins.
  • Internal Revolt: Leland Dudek, the agency’s then acting chief, helped DOGE at first, then tried to resist when he saw what it was doing, Dudek said in 15 hours of candid interviews.
  • DOGE Lives On: Multiple former DOGErs have taken permanent roles at the Social Security Administration, and Senate-confirmed Commissioner Frank Bisignano has embraced its approach.
  • anon6789@lemmy.world
    24·
    3 days ago

    For all the controversy DOGE has generated, its time at the Social Security Administration has not amounted to looming armageddon, as some Democrats warn. What it’s been, as much as anything, is a missed opportunity, according to interviews with more than 35 current or recently departed Social Security officials and staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mostly out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, and a review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, emails and court records.

    The DOGE team, and Bisignano, have prioritized scoring quick wins that allow them to post triumphant tweets and press releases — especially, in the early months, about an essentially nonexistent form of fraud — while squandering the chance for systemic change at an agency that genuinely needs it.

    They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year.

    They did none of these things.

    I have a real hard time believing there are any good people in DOGE.

    The people they talk to in this article, and the people NPR have interviewed all like to talk like they were there to bring in sweeping good changes.

    But when everything before these people signed up for these jobs was so public, about Musk and Trump and their highly visible opinions of these agencies and how they felt about them, how any reasonable person could think this is the type of change that would be implemented is beyond me.

    They all come off as people with no capability to read the room or to understand they’re being used by evil people. They might be good IT people or programmers, but if accounting knowledge or any experience with an agency or what it does isn’t a requirement or even a consideration when you are coming in as a “reformer,” that should raise red flags.

    I don’t trust any of these people, and I no longer have faith in any of the data they hold or share being secure. I think everyone should get a new SSN if/when sanity returns to the agency. There is no way this important information was held securely with people this sloppy and of poor judgement in charge of it.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      3 days ago

      The only point of their time in there was to install backdoors into various sensitive databases, and randomly wipe and unplug various critical systems for theatrical political effect.

      DOGE was never about saving money. It was always about setting up channels for Palantir et al to build their insane and incredibly dangerous panopticon of Total Information Awareness, while simultaneously distracting the masses from the fact that they were doing just that. They saw what the CCP did with the surveillance state stuff they’ve implemented over the last couple decades and were like “that - let’s do THAT”.

    • HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com
      9·
      3 days ago

      The blaringly obvious reason they didn’t try to make any of these improvements is that DOGE is not and never was about efficiency.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
        5·
        3 days ago

        Exactly. They made it very clear that these were just things they felt were obstacles slowing them down from doing as they pleased.

          • anon6789@lemmy.world
            2·
            3 days ago

            SSA is just part of the package. DOGE’s “services” are in exchange for special privileges for Elon’s companies. Removing regulations, worker protections, limits on what can go on in his company town, oversight for whatever nonsense Boring Company gets up to, and so on.