The new head of the Social Security Administration seeks to obtain times waiting for calls for “unique figures”, as part of this strategy to make the agency a “digital organization first”.
An SSA official told the Federal News Network that the agency monthly appeal waiting time had gone from 30 minutes in January to around 12 minutes in May, when the appellants were included who received a “recall” option and did not have to remain waiting. SSA has the reminders as a zero -minute waiting time on its customer service measures.
SSA commissioner Frank Bisignano told employees at a meeting every hands on Thursday that it was the “best performance” of the agency since it started to follow these measures. But said he planned to reduce the waiting times for a fraction of that using artificial intelligence tools.
“We are going to get this thing to one figure,” he said.
According to its performance dashboard of 800 numbersThe average SSA speed to answer calls, so far during the 2025 financial year, is around 20 minutes, and less than half of all calls are answered. SSA responds to around 390,000 calls every day.
An SSA employee, who spoke under the guise of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media, said that around 70% of the agency appellants were processed by reminders.
At the time of the report, the current waiting time for a caller to reach a SSA representative is an hour and 38 minutes, if the appellant chooses to stay on the line and does not require a recall. For the appellants who ask for a reminder, it takes SSA for about an hour and 36 minutes to remind them. More than 3,259 appellants who have not opted for a reminder await pending, and more than 22,000 appellants are waiting for a reminder.
Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive who led a financial technology company before joining the Trump administration, told employees that it “used AI before its IA being” and supervised financial organizations that have treated a higher volume of payments than SSA.
“Much larger organizations, much more important problems-but not as important. Can you see the difference? Here, we are doing 1.5 billion of dollars per year. In my last job, we have done 2.5 billions of dollars per day. It is more important than this,” he said.
“I understand the work you do. I may not have done it in the federal government, but it’s the same work,” he added.
Bisignano said that he also focused on driving a backlog of more than 6 million actions pending, and that she will visit a treatment center in Queens, New York on Friday.
An SSA official said that these SSA treatment centers “require additional manual development and cannot be automated”.
“I will see why we have 6.1 million items in the order book. It disappears. We will use tools, we will continue to deploy it,” said Bisignano. “We are going to win in campaign offices, we will win in call centers. We will win in treatment centers. And I promise I’m going to find my sleeves and work, because I know how to do this. ”
Bisignano said SSA would be able to implement new tools and provide better customer service to beneficiaries during its first year of work.
“It’s a six-year quarter, but it’s going to be less than a year’s work. I’m not saying that we’re going to end it in a year. It doesn’t mean I’m going in a year, but it’s my deadline for that. We have waited too long. There are too many articles in the back. There are too many people waiting,” he said.
The SSA faces a growing workload. Former President Joe Biden signed the Social Security Act of Social Security In law before leaving its duties in January, which gives monthly monthly social security payments to 3 million public sector employees, retirees, spouses and surviving spouses.
The legislation has eliminated the provision of the elimination of the windfall and the compensation of government pensions – two long -standing social security provisions which reduce or eliminate the advantages of certain pensioners from the government, including the annuitiers of the public service retirement system, as well as teachers, firefighters, police and others who worked in a public sector post.
An SSA official said that delivery of services to eligible people under the Social Security Equity Act is a “priority workload” and that the agency used automation to accelerate more than $ 15.1 billion in “long retroactive payments” to more than 2.3 million people affected by WEP and GPO.
The manager said that the SSA “works to exceed” its estimate that this workload will be completed by early November and favors 360,000 “more complex cases” which could not be treated by automation.
“These cases require an additional time to manually update the files and pay the retroactive advantages and the new amount of the advantages,” said the official.
An SSA employee, who spoke under the guise of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media, told Federal News Network that the agency had launched a “massive push” to treat these 360,000 cases, “to the detriment of other workloads”.
The agency manager, however, said that “the SSA does not put aside or does not postpone the work because it favors SSFA cases”.
Bisignano told employees that the SSA will revise its “Myssa” website, so that more beneficiaries – mainly retirees and Americans disabled – can have their questions online, instead of the phone or in person in campaign offices.
“I want to know all the transactions made on the phone or in a field office that can really be done on the web,” he said.
Before Bisignano took office, the SSA under the Trump administration proposed and returned several plans To limit the level of telephone support of the agency to beneficiaries – forcing them to request help in person in field offices or online.
Recent analysis From the Center on Budget and Political Priorities, notes that more than a quarter of the elderly in the United States live more than an hour’s drive from their field office closest to the SSA, and more than half of the nearest establishment.
SSA in mid-April launched an “anti-fraud” check for AI On all complaints filed by phone, which added three additional days to the processing.
SSA currently has its the lowest level of staff in 50 years, But Bisignano said the agency would increase its IT modernization expenses to acquire tools that will make employees more productive.
“I am happy that we are in business together-and yes, it is normal to call government affairs. We must modernize everything we do. And yes, we will spend money on it, and I can guarantee that your work will become better,” he said.
The SSA received the lowest employees of the lowest employees among the major agencies last year, According to compiled data by the partnership for the best workplace of the public service in the dashboard of the federal government.
Bisignano has said that the next SSA computer investments will give employees the tools they need to do their job effectively and improve morale.
“We will invest in you, we will invest in your work. We will invest in a customer experience, if I can call it so. And when employees’ experience improves and the customer experience improves, you win, right? We could be the model agency, ”he said.
The Trump administration offers a Budget of $ 12.7 billion for the SSA during the year 2026 – A flat budget, compared to its current expenditure levels. But Bisignano said the SSA will obtain funding for IT modernization, as these improvements are a priority for President Donald Trump.
“It is very important to the president that social security works very well,” he said.
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