Elon Musk is gone but not forgotten at the Social Security Administration, as the head of the agency considers himself “fundamentally a DOGE person.”
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano said in a recent interview that he plans to use the engineers Musk brought in with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to revamp the agency to rely more heavily on technology and artificial intelligence for providing customer service, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The interview was conducted before Musk’s spectacular falling out last week with President Donald Trump. The president is reportedly dragging all of MAGA into the war and forcing them to choose sides, meaning Bisignano could ultimately be forced to distance himself from Musk.
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For now, though, Bisignano says he wants to use DOGE to make his department a “digital-first organization.” The former Wall Street executive took over the embattled agency on May 7 after Googling what the job entailed.
He faces an uphill battle in winning over both the public and agency staffers after Musk’s DOGE cut thousands of jobs, forced its way into databases containing Americans’ personal data, and threatened to close offices, the Journal reported.
The agency was already at historically low staffing levels, with average call-in wait times of about 60 minutes, USA Today reported last month. Since DOGE and the Trump administration came in, wait times are up to 90 minutes on average.
Such a high average means that some people are waiting even longer—up to 150 minutes, USA Today found—or not getting through at all. Of the 380,000 people who call in each day, about half fail to get through to a representative, according to the Journal.
For those visiting field offices in person, drop-ins are no longer allowed, and many people have to join a waitlist just to make an appointment, according to USA Today.
In a statement to USA Today, Bisignano’s predecessor blamed Biden-era work-from-home policies and diversity initiatives for the increase in wait times during the Trump administration.
The increases coincided with the agency offering buyouts to 3,000 of the agency’s 57,000 employees, with officials planning to shed about 7,000 more jobs, according to USA Today.
Bisignano wants to use DOGE personnel to cut wait times and speed up the processing of retirement, survivor, and Medicare benefits, according to the Wall Street Journal. The agency had already been using AI to respond to 1-800 calls, with bots handling 17 percent of calls last October. In March, the number was up to 44 percent.
Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the Wall Street Journal she had heard about callers getting stuck in loops with the bots.
Bisignano said AI integration is “a long journey,” but that Musk’s DOGE personnel, including eight engineers, will continue to “refine the intelligence” to provide better answers.
The team includes Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who once wrote on social media that he wanted to “normalize Indian hate” and that “you could not pay me to marry outside my race.”
In the meantime, the Supreme Court this week gave DOGE access to agency records “in order for those members to do their work.” A lower court had found that giving DOGE access violated federal law and put millions of people’s data at risk.
Before the ruling, Bisignano had assured the Wall Street Journal that Americans’ personal data was secure, and that DOGE is only focused on the agency’s technology.
