What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security(propublica.org)
propublica.org
What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-doge-social-security-takeover-leland-dudek
8 comments
We already had efforts that bring change: the US Digital Services.
They were staffed by real professionals. Ex-Googlers and other tech talent were already working on these problems.
In contrast, DOGE was a bunch of 22 year old idiots someone found on Discord.
What have they accomplished? Other than mishandling customer data and finding some unused software licenses, it’s not clear to me.
The problem is everyone thinks solving these massive problems is easy - but it takes years of effort, inch by inch. But I guess DOGE is better for headlines, and that’s what people seem to care about.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Servic...
They were staffed by real professionals. Ex-Googlers and other tech talent were already working on these problems.
In contrast, DOGE was a bunch of 22 year old idiots someone found on Discord.
What have they accomplished? Other than mishandling customer data and finding some unused software licenses, it’s not clear to me.
The problem is everyone thinks solving these massive problems is easy - but it takes years of effort, inch by inch. But I guess DOGE is better for headlines, and that’s what people seem to care about.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Servic...
The entire DOGE exercise, depending on which flavor of red cap wearer you talk to, was either fake (it was just for PR), about efficiency (trim waste), loyalty purges (drain the swamp), or mass layoffs (drown the government in the bath tub). Most of that sounds bad.
Double sow because DOGE itself was not a real government agency. Which then create a massive loophole for it to be run by a guy who didn't go through the appointee congressional approval process if it were a real agency.
And yet it was wielding power over real agencies with real appointees at the head...
Double sow because DOGE itself was not a real government agency. Which then create a massive loophole for it to be run by a guy who didn't go through the appointee congressional approval process if it were a real agency.
And yet it was wielding power over real agencies with real appointees at the head...
Its scary and wild how that era has receeded so quickly, at least for me. The accusations of fraud, the reckless plundering of databases in grossly illegal manner: it's all slipping, the archive of that intense couple months compressing, with just an image of Elon Musk with a chainsaw hat & sunglasses as the icon.
More monstrosities were to follow.
More monstrosities were to follow.
Reads like a bunch of CYA soundbites from a man who was incompetent and never should have been in the position he was in.
Much like many others in this administration. People worth their merit to lead these organizations say no, so we're left with egotistical personnel who were destined to top out at middle management.
Much like many others in this administration. People worth their merit to lead these organizations say no, so we're left with egotistical personnel who were destined to top out at middle management.
> Bobba had sorted people with a Social Security number by age and found more than 12 million over 120 years old still listed in the agency’s data.
> Bobba said he knew these people weren’t actually receiving benefits and tried to tell Musk so, to no avail, according to SSA officials. Dudek watched in horror as Trump then shared the same statistics with both houses of Congress and a national television audience, claiming the numbers proved “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors.”
It was frustrating to watch how this obviously false claim was being pushed so hard.
It’s hard to know who’s telling the truth, but this claim feels unsurprising: Someone did a query and found a lot of rows of people born over 120 years ago, shared it in something like a Signal group, and then Elon ran with it like it was proof that they were all receiving benefits. Once the seed for the headline was played they didn’t want to hear any evidence that the claim wasn’t true.
> Bobba said he knew these people weren’t actually receiving benefits and tried to tell Musk so, to no avail, according to SSA officials. Dudek watched in horror as Trump then shared the same statistics with both houses of Congress and a national television audience, claiming the numbers proved “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors.”
It was frustrating to watch how this obviously false claim was being pushed so hard.
It’s hard to know who’s telling the truth, but this claim feels unsurprising: Someone did a query and found a lot of rows of people born over 120 years ago, shared it in something like a Signal group, and then Elon ran with it like it was proof that they were all receiving benefits. Once the seed for the headline was played they didn’t want to hear any evidence that the claim wasn’t true.
Few people realize how complicated the rules of Social Security are. That giant scroll? I’ve never seen it, but I’ve listened to many hours of discussion about how individuals might approach filing their benefits. There are many, many caveats.
There is a great opportunity for a software reboot that involves test interfaces so users can model their scenarios. The ACA marketplace offers something like this, a step in the right direction.
It’s time to enable reasonable self-service for these programs. Hopefully DOGE is the first of the incremental efforts that can bring it.