On the call, SSA managers spoke about how difficult it was to keep employees motivated, especially when they know that their work will have to ramp up after the shutdown concludes. “It’s hard to keep morale going with the way the staff is going, and they also know that as soon as this shutdown is over, we’re going to hit ’em hard with [more work],” said one employee. “It’s very frustrating when we have to keep those staff motivated and we need ’em for the long haul, not just for this fiscal year.”
Employees also described the specific toll the shutdown was taking on Social Security beneficiaries. In one instance, recounted on the call, an office lost half their team. “Now my public is waiting two hours in [the] reception area, hour and hour and a half on phones,” said the same employee, who noted that wait times used to be around half an hour.
The SSA has been embroiled in chaos throughout President Donald Trump’s second term. WIRED reported in March that almost a dozen operatives from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency had been deployed to SSA, including big-name early operatives like Luke Farritor, Marko Elez, and Akash Bobba.
According to a court filing from the SSA in federal court and accompanying sworn statements, a number of the DOGE operatives had access to a number of sensitive data sets, including Numident, which contains detailed information about anyone with a social security number. DOGE claimed they required this kind of access in order to detect “fraud.” However, many of DOGE’s claims about the agency were untrue and inaccurate, including the claim that 150-year-olds were collecting social security benefits.
In August, SSA’s chief data officer, Chuck Borges, submitted a whistleblower complaint that claimed DOGE had mishandled sensitive data and uploaded the confidential information of millions of Americans to an insecure server. When Borges sent an email to agency staff stating that he was involuntarily resigning, following his whistleblower complaint, the email mysteriously disappeared from inboxes, employees told WIRED at the time.
“I’m invested in this organization. I love what we do, but I feel like it’s not going in the right direction, and we’re not really serving the public like we should or even our employees,” said one employee during Thursday’s management call. “We’re not trying to beat people up, it’s just that we are so invested.”
