The SSA did not respond to a request from WIRED about what the DOGE operatives are working on inside the agency.
In a Tuesday meeting, United States DOGE Service (USDS) administrator Amy Gleason told staff that Musk-affiliated engineers and some legacy USDS workers would be headed to SSA to improve “identity proofing,” say sources who were in the meeting. The US DOGE Service is a permanent rebranding of the US Digital Service. Identity proofing is the process SSA uses to identify that users are who they say they are in order to access their benefits. The process includes registering with identity apps such as the government’s own Login.gov or third-party services such as ID.me.
At a meeting last week, according to the Washington Post, Dudek, the SSA’s acting commissioner, told staff that the “DOGE people” were effectively in charge of day-to-day operations at the agency and they “were going to make mistakes.” He also made it clear that he had been in direct contact with the White House.
“I work for the president,” Dudek said, according to a longer recording of the meeting obtained by ProPublica. ”I need to do what the president tells me to do, I’ve had to make some tough choices, choices I didn’t agree with, but the president wanted it and I did it.”
Last month, Dudek outlined plans to fire 7,000 employees at the SSA and close more than half of the agency’s regional offices, while confirming that many of the SSA’s most senior staff were departing. This week, the agency reportedly gave up on the idea of fully abandoning phone service for clients after the Washington Post reported on the plan.
The SSA houses a highly complex system built on decades-old technology, and contains some of the most sensitive personal information held anywhere within the US government. The threat posed by DOGE engineers making mistakes within these systems, experts say, is huge.
Martin O’Malley, a former SSA commissioner, warned last week following DOGE’s incursion that within months, the SSA system could ”collapse” and recipients would see “an interruption of benefits.” This warning was repeated by Flick, who wrote in her affidavit that DOGE’s lack of knowledge of the SSA systems “combined with the significant loss of expertise as more and more agency personnel leave, have me seriously concerned that SSA programs will continue to function and operate without disruption.”
“It’s a valid fear that personally identifiable information will be exfiltrated, or source code messed with without necessary controls and rigor,” John McGing, a former SSA employee who worked at the agency for almost four decades, tells WIRED.
Additionally, DOGE has imposed a $1 spending limit on federal credit cards, which has led to some regional SSA offices experiencing issues buying basic supplies, including paper and toner, according to details shared with WIRED by one SSA employee.
“We have started rationing paper,” the source says. “People like to ask for four copies of their benefit verification letter. We’ve been giving them one and telling them to make their own copies.”
The provision of sign language interpreters for appointments at the SSA have also been interrupted, due to the $1 spending limit. “We have to go back to that client and tell them we can’t provide an interpreter even though everything on our website says we will provide that,” the source said, citing an incident that happened this week.
SSA staff are also now unable to order death certificates which are used to verify if someone within the system is dead or not, according to an email reviewed by WIRED.
The source added that the office is also unable to pay the company that shreds mountains of documents it prints out on a daily basis, raising fears that piles of paper with highly sensitive personally identifiable information could soon be left lying around the office.
Timothy Marchman contributed reporting.
