Since Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took effective control of the Social Security Administration, the agency that services the needs of the Americans who have paid into it throughout their lives has become such a mess that officials have started hiding unflattering metrics.
According to a report from the Washington Post, the purging of employees at Social Security along with a change in how the agency does business by DOGE has resulted in "website crashes, overloaded servers and long lines at field offices" due to cost-cutting.
The Saturday report by the Post's Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson notes that the agency has now "... stopped publicly reporting its processing times for benefits, the 1-800 number’s current call wait time and numerous other performance metrics, which customers and advocates have used to track the agency’s struggling customer service programs."
According to those advocates for the 74 million Americans who rely on Social Security, hiding the metrics is a betrayal of the public's trust.
Ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who served as a Social Security commissioner, pointed out, "It’s a shame that now they are trashing the trust that the public should have in numbers that are timely and accurate and real."
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Alex Lawson, executive director of the Social Security Works, was more pointed in his criticism.
“If they think this lack of transparency will fool the American people, they’re in for a surprise,” he predicted. “People notice when they can’t get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person.”
According to the Post, "The new website now shows only the percentage of calls and number of calls handled through automation, the average speed to answer and the total number of customers served. That data is only available for the fiscal year through the last month that data is available. And while the previous dashboard allowed users to click on data points and see trends over time, the new page does not show historical data."
"Pages with information about the processing times for retirement, survivor, disability and Medicare benefits are now gone," the Post is reporting before adding that information on disability benefits have been excised from the new page.
You can read more here.