Joint Subcommittee Hearing with the Commissioner of Social Security, Frank J. Bisignano

Thank you. Members of the subcommittees, under President Trump, the Social Security Administration is delivering faster service, better customer experiences, and higher quality outcomes for the American people. Every customer-facing service channel, field office, phones, and web has improved by double digits. This is the best all-around performance ever at the Social Security Administration. We have pledged and are protecting and preserving Social Security. SSA serves over 300 million people. And this year, we will have over 800 million interactions. As a result of our record-breaking performance, we're saving the American people over 40 million hours. The American people are winning. Before I arrived in May 2025, SSA had four different leaders in five months and was an agency in turmoil. The American people endured a failed service model. The Biden administration's so-called appointment-focused service turned people away who traveled to our field offices. On the national 800 number, only half of our customers got their calls answered. On the web, self-service features were down 29 hours a week. Turning people away who travel to field offices, only answering half the calls, and having office hours on the web is not meeting our customers where they want to be met. The Trump administration is transforming SSA into a model of excellence, a digital-first agency that meets and exceeds customer expectations for timely, accurate service in the channel of their choice. More than 99% of our field offices are open and serving the public with average wait times reduced to 20 minutes, a 30% improvement. No field office is closed due to staffing. We now answer 90% of calls to our 800 number and have reduced average wait time to 5 minutes, a 75% improvement. Simultaneously, physical year-to-date, we are serving 56% more people, which represents 13 million additional customers served. Online services are now available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, enabling customers to complete transactions instantaneously. We are up 37% on our web transactions and up 21% on account creations. We are the largest digital financial services platform with over 103 million my Social Security accounts. In serving our most vulnerable, we have reduced wait times for initial disability claims decisions by 34 days, reduced hearing wait times by 91 days, reaching historic lows, and are quickly delivering disability benefits to those who qualify. Technology, process engineering, and disciplined execution have driven this transformation. Some of our recent improvements include online claims, straight-through processing, and advanced technology. These improvements have generated the equivalent of 2500 work years in productivity savings across the agency. With better process engineering and management, we have reduced workload in field offices by the equivalent of 600 work years, allowing staff to spend more time serving customers directly. We have also prioritized workforce engagement. For the first time in agency history, I have established advisory councils that report directly to me. These efforts are producing results. Annualized fiscal year 2026 attrition will be 30% lower than fiscal year 2024, providing consistency for both staff and the public we serve. Finally, we have made risk management a core operating principle at SSA. We have closed IG audit recommendations at a record pace, helping protect $16 billion in taxpayer funds. We are meeting congressional program integrity requirements, strengthening controls, and relentlessly pursuing the elimination of fraud, waste, and abuse. We have also restored stability. During the past year, there has been no turnover among my direct reports, whether career or political. That leadership continuity combined with the dedication of SSA's workforce enabled the agency to serve the American people through the 43-day government shutdown during the peak of retirement season. I am honored to lead this agency and serve the American people. We are building a modern, sustainable, and durable organization. The president's fiscal year 2027 budget request supports this transformation. Mr. Chairman, over the past year, we have improved service, strengthened controls, deployed technology, and delivered measurable results at historic scale. I look forward to discussing these accomplishments and answering your questions.

Thank you very much. I think first of all, I'm honored to be here. When we look at what we inherited, we inherited something that existed for a long time. One of the first observations I had is way too many layers of management. We didn't shut down anything that was facing clients, right? Regional offices was another level of bureaucracy. We didn't close down a field office. We actually reallocated our staff to where the work was. I think that's a basic tactic. I think also we looked at what we needed when we need it. First day I looked at the numbers on the 800 number at 8 a.m. with 4,000 people on our staff, we had 400 and the phone was ringing. Obviously, people wanted to call us in the morning and we weren't there. I like to make this more complicated, but it's not. It's putting people where the work is. It's building technology in a modern-day fashion. It's understanding what best-in-class performance looks like and motivating a workforce who's fully motivated to be here. We have great people in SSA who love to serve the American public.

I think when we look at the numbers, first of all, as you know, you have fundamentally three-quarters of a million Social Security numbers in your jurisdiction and we pay out more than 300 million a month. So there's a very important engine to every one of the districts and we're very proud of the full balanced scorecard. Visitors are down in field offices and up everywhere else, although that's fundamentally half our staffing and we committed to never close a field office and always be there. I think every number in the place is double digit improvement and that says the head of disability, we never actually had a head of disability before, and it's a career person who was a judge, runs disability and says it's bread-and-butter management to him what they're learning and they're growing. So we look at a balanced scorecard. We have a governance structure that looks at the numbers every week as a management team and we're committed to having a better year in front of us than a year behind us.

Well, that's why when we look at every week for an hour and a half as a management team, that would be my direct reports and their direct reports, 200 indicators and go through them. We want to make sure we're making hearings more efficient. We're making, by the way, efficient equals quality too. Better output, less errors, quicker responses to clients. So I think the only way to do it is look at a balanced scorecard, make sure we have the right resource allocation and a technology roadmap to change it. We're not modernizing, we're transforming.

Yeah, it's called PI, payment information exchange. The first days here, I didn't know what they meant by PI, but we learned it real quick. We've expanded it. We have more information coming into it and we changed the interval that the information comes. So it's a daily exchange. It's a way that we get information from outside bureaus and can compare so we reduce our improper payments.

We are not. From the day I've been here, we haven't added people to the death master file who are living. I will tell you, I approached this as a first-time ever approach. There was something called the Numident file, maybe you've all heard of Numident. It's not a common word in anyone's neighborhood. Probably no one walks into a Social Security office and says 'Am I on the Numident file?' I like to call it the Social Security number database. That Social Security number database had never been reconciled. Now recognize, we created two new positions: a head of risk management to report to me, which was well subordinated in the organization, and a head of cyber and resiliency, both two great career executives in the federal government. In the creation of those roles, they absorbed all different types of ways to do the business and the work. We reconcile today the Social Security number database. We use lots of data exchanges. We are the number one identifier for Americans of who they are. So having that as pristine as possible, and if it was never reconciled before, it's really been a heroic effort by the team which I think ensures our data integrity and our data accuracy, and then building a cyber function of world class where we actually have outsiders and ourselves continually pounding at it is about the risk management function of Social Security which did not exist before.

No, no, sorry.

I believe whatever the law is should be upheld.

Whatever the law is should be upheld.

I'm not the dictator of the law.

Is that a question?

I would say that the fact of the matter is Congress, and that would be laid by yourself as a ranking member here, has a responsibility to decide what they want to work on. The commissioner's job...

I'm answering a reality.

Yeah, I thought when we looked at SSI in general and we looked at this vulnerable population, what we recognized very quickly was there was no accountability within the agency for delivering against it. Yes, everybody worked on it. So as I said, we have a dedicated executive in charge and he's been on a multi-pronged effort, one as you said on SSI and obviously the payroll exchange we talk about is mission critical to SSI to ensure that we're not making payments and then coming back to people. On Ticket to Work, as we think about our beneficiaries, we don't want them burdened by reporting issues and we're committed to them. In fact, people with disabilities, promoting that they have dignity to come back to work, we're promoting incentives and automated self-reporting through the systems we have. We're encouraging employment networks to educate and we're fully engaged in that. I think we have the first large-scale evaluation program in over a decade to gather all information and come back on what's not effective still more. Ticket to Work is a very strong program to help people to work. SSI deals with our most vulnerable and we need to have people understand that if they decide to go to Ticket to Work, if they have some hardship, we will still be there for them. I think that's the most important element that we have to work on, Congressman.

Yeah, I think we've done multiple things. Obviously PI being the largest, the payroll exchange, seeing information, understanding it. The second is in fact cutting payment cycles down so we have the most current information. The payment cycles were multiple days and on any day something can change relative to it. So getting those down to a couple days as opposed to multiple has made more, and we'll continue. This will be a never-ending pursuit, to be honest with you, of continuing to refine the process and improve the processes.

I think we've done multiple things. Obviously PI being the largest, the payroll exchange, seeing information, understanding it. The second is in fact cutting payment cycles down so we have the most current information. The payment cycles were multiple days and on any day something can change relative to it. So getting those down to a couple days as opposed to multiple has made more, and we'll continue. This will be a never-ending pursuit, to be honest with you, of continuing to refine the process and improve the processes.

100%.

I say first of all, we do post-call surveys both on callbacks and first time. Call back is an industry norm. It's not our specific item. We measure it the same way every industry does. We can say that we outperform more than 50% of the commercial entities and that we have performance at the high end in the federal government. Having said that, we do post-call surveys on everything and we have about an 89% satisfaction rate. I think if you think about your jurisdiction, we have three quarters of a million Social Security number holders in your jurisdiction, sir. And we're paying out more than 181 million a month to those beneficiaries.

Tell me what you mean by that.

So when they call up, we give them an option. The option is you have an X minute wait time, an 8 minute wait time, a 10 minute wait time, and then we say that and if they would like a call back, we will call you within that time period. So we tell every caller what to expect relative to their call backs.

Well, we've actually spent time and gone through the elements that need to be changed. We have recommendations to change them and I'm happy to come see you and go through it with you.

Happy to do it, and happy to do it with you and your staff together.

Happy to. It's not an IRS meeting, but I'm happy to, sir.

Thank you, sir. I think first of all, we've always believed we should meet clients where they want to be met. If they want to come to a field office, we're there to serve them. If they want to call us on the phone. If they don't want to wait on the phone for the wait time, they can take a call back. And then as more and more people transact with us, more and more want to do it on the web. If you look at what's happened, I'd say the first thing is we had a system that said appointment needed when you came to a field office. Appointment needed. We sent people home. We sent them home. Right. Those signs no longer exist. And that was not only did we send those people home, we sent the employees home. So that was very convenient for everybody, but somebody who wanted service. And then we had a web down 29 hours a week. By changing all that, what's actually happened is field office visits are down because people can access us on the phone. Like we said, fiscal year to date, we've answered and served 13 million more Americans. We've saved Americans 40 million hours of wait time. And our web traffic is up 37%. And we'll do 800 million interactions. 3% of them happen in field offices physically, but we have 23,000 people there and we're going to serve the American public wherever they want to be met.

Yeah. I think the number one thing is our own advocacy with employment networks because we have a deep belief that we can be advocates in a larger standpoint to have them understand these are fabulous Americans who are capable, obviously continuing the journey to work on things like ticket to work also, which isn't on the initial disability, but after. And I think it needs to be a concerted effort locally and nationally and I look forward to working with everybody here on making progress on this. This is real good work and the work that has to do as a person in the private sector who believed in veteran employment and created the 100,000 jobs mission and that meant for disabled vets too. I understand how this can be done and we're going to get it done.

Well, we are in the process right now of having a dedicated resource just for a person for identity theft. I think that was job one. I think above that job is a conversation I had earlier which is a full reconciliation constantly of what is really the Social Security number database. Because many times that fraud doesn't happen within Social Security. It happens in the other areas of government and elsewhere where that number gets used. So the ability for us to stay vigilant on the reconciliation, the ability for us to supply a dedicated resource so people have a dedicated person to deal with, and then continue data cleansing.

Speed of answer metric.

First of all, I think a good way to think about this whole situation is we used to have 400 people on the phone at 8:00 a.m. in the morning. And that was not a sufficient number. That was predating me. That would go back to the era that you well remember where we told people appointments are needed. This was a sign from '24. They've been ripped down. Right? What we've seen is people sent home to do work from home in field offices. Well, that's inappropriate.

What I think in fact is we have the right amount of staff in the right places.

You want to know how to manage 50,000 people anyway?

Say she doesn't know how to manage.

Did you just say that she doesn't know how to manage 50,000 people? So, I don't know. Do you know her capabilities of management?

Okay. Thank you.

I think this is the letter for this meeting. It's an SSA meeting. I just want to get in on that.

You're correct.

Well, first of all, thank you for the question. And as I sit here, I recognize that in your district, that was $14 million that went to more than 2,100 recipients. And in fact, if you think about it, within your district, we're paying benefits of more than $400 million a month. So powerful, and your support is tremendous. I think when we came – when I came in in May and checked on the status of it, they said it would be done by 11:30. And I asked the barriers. And fundamentally, the barriers were applying people to the work. But what became very clear to me was through a few meetings that we could technically solve the problem. And much of the gains we've made in the agency has been through technology, not through any other means. You know, you can't just throw people at problems in this day and age. You got to use technology. So the CIO and myself and the head of the processing center that was doing these spent some time and we were done by June 30th. But it was our great technologists who I think are delivering a lot of what you hear here in the enhancements, whether it's on the web, whether it's in the field offices or on the phone.

No, they've outperformed in double-digit fashion. But I kind of understand why he said that because he was telling people who drove to your field office, go home, and appointments needed. He took field office employees and sent them home and disregarded the fact that the web was down 29 hours a week. So I think maybe he had a formula for that, but thank the good Lord we had the support of all of you and the president to change that outcome.

Well, I don't think it makes it any harder. You know, it's something we don't really pay attention to. If you listen to boobirds in the right field, you're not going to win games. Our career employees love what they do. Our leadership team has stayed intact. Not one change on that team, and that's political and career. And I think they've risen to the occasion. They're proud of what they're doing, more proud than they ever have been. You know, we used to describe Social Security as 70-plus million recipients of payments and keeping 15 or 20% of the people out of poverty. I think that actually affected the self-esteem of the department because most people they talk to every day are not a beneficiary. We have a disability process that is judges, and we're just helping them through their process. And if you come to our field office, the number one thing asked for is a replacement card, which we've built the technology for them not to have to come. So I think we've elevated the esteem of the department. It's the largest digital financial service provider in the world, with 102 million digital accounts, and yes, with only 3% of our volume coming into field offices and half our staff in field offices, we will never close a field office.

Well, we had something called iClaims. And iClaims sounded great if you did it, but it took a really long time to get ultimately finished because what it was was a claimant put their claim in online, but it never went through the system. Somebody else input it, fraught with errors. We've determined it straight through processing. We've built the edits and right now we're processing Medicare claims to the hundreds of thousands. It's moving to retirement claims, and it happens in days, not weeks. So those are the types of things that allow us to serve more Americans. That's what we're talking about, serving more Americans quicker than ever before.

I'll tell you a couple things, even though you want a yes or no answer.

First of all, we have more metrics up than ever before on the web. So let's just start there.

Second, I'll answer your question. The answer is yes. And that's an industry standard across every industry. That's how it's counted because –

I just told you, industry standard.

Takes today under 30 minutes on average. By the way, some take five minutes.

By the way, they select it because it's better service.

I don't have that number in front of me, ma'am.

Well, I think being here is very helpful because it gets you to understand the strategy. The strategy is really about meeting clients where they want to be met. The strategy is about understanding what is the expectation across industry in general.

Yeah. Well, we're always focused on how we're going to bring advanced technology. You know, if you look at what we did with taking the 29 hours away of downtime off the web, that was a mix of really great engineers inside and some other people. If you look at what we're doing in fraud using advanced analytics. So, you know, there's no great tech that can just do everything themselves. And I think it's not about modernizing, it's about transforming, and transforming ultimately for the benefit of the American public.

Well, what I thought the first thing that was mandatory is to get it to work. Right. You know, I always think if you make the operations better, people are prepared to invest in those operations. And no matter what we want to do, all we have to do is compare the data from '24 to date on how the American public's being served and compare the data on our control environment. You know, we took down control issues by fundamentally 80% and reduced, you know, $16 billion of erroneous problem. And I know once we eliminate fraud, there's billions of payments that we've made. Bank robbers or people that have stolen money have to realize they don't have to rob banks anymore. They can just build the government or utilize fraud in a lot of spaces.

Like I said, I always thought my job was to make it perform as well as possible. So you all have a set of options and choices to decide on how this great American program, which is fundamentally called by some the largest insurance program out there, others could call it the largest retirement program out there. Anyway, the idea is to make it perform well so you all can make the decision.

Good to see you.

Yeah, I think those are all great points that are all being worked on. Why don't we start at the top because we are now, and I would give the committee credit and Chairman LaHood for being dedicated to Ticket to Work and spending time with his office on Ticket to Work. And the real answer is greater education by every network out there. We put somebody in charge of the program. There was no one in charge of it. If you don't have someone in charge of it, the odds of it succeeding are zero. We did the same with SSI. I think that allows us to go out to the outside and explain to him and to people on the inside who are on the program. And we have an opportunity to talk to these people all the time, our own on disability, and improving that dialogue. So I think we're at the start. I think the program did not have the attention. If you don't have a dedicated — we did it on SSI and Ticket to Work — but a dedicated executive who reports into me and they run the program. So I would expect, and happy to give updates as I have to Chairman LaHood on those items. Relative to improper payments, the more we build out a payment information exchange, which we do with massive organizations who have the data, and we've really veered into it, and the more we cut down payment cycles, the better our accuracy of payment as opposed to improper payments will be and continue to be.

You know, there's $381 million a month that go to your beneficiaries in your district. So congrats for what you're doing.

Well, what I know is that as an example, your field office wait times are down 60%. Right? And that's a 34-minute decrease from 24. I'm not looking at your disability numbers, and I'll come back to you on them. But if you look at our total disability numbers —

I'll compare them with you because I didn't hear you talking about the field offices.

Did you understand people should wait 11 months?

I'll give my head of disability to come see you and your office. Thank you.

No.

Disability hearing time is at an all-time low.

All-time low. It's at an all-time low. How long you've been standing up there sitting there? How many years? How many years you've been here?

Well, it's the best performance you've ever had. So, you should think about that.

Somehow you allowed it — deserve before to be worse. I haven't allowed anything.

Yes.

I just said it.

Yeah. Well, what I was saying is in 2024, it took 56 minutes in a field office to get served, and today it takes 22. I also know because we have a centralized system that never existed before that there's seven pending congressional inquiries with us from his office. And we would like every one of them resolved. But this is the pure real data captured the same way it was before. We never knew how much was in congressional offices before until we built the system so we could know everyone. That's all I was trying to say, the facts.

Well, the first thing I like to refer to is two key strategic things we did as I came in and assessed the situation. We created a chief risk officer reporting directly to me, and we went and recruited the head of the Secret Service and then the head of the Park Police to be the head of cyber security, security, and resiliency. And why those are so important is that's the first lines of defense we have — having the right talent with the right expertise to be able to prevent fraud, identify bad actors. Obviously, we've been very focused. We do everything the IG and ourselves work closely on all types of fraud prevention. And along with that, I think highlighting in every imaginable way communicating with our elderly — I think it's important that they recognize the scammers out there. I yesterday did another broadcast. We did 'Slam the Scam' day with the Inspector General. We prevent elder abuse. The largest abuse they could have is people scamming them and their money. And we try to broadcast as much to all networks to know how to protect their identity and that there's no federal agency that will ever call and ask them to do something that they wouldn't naturally do.

Yeah. I think that's the right way to go. And that should send a message to the American people that you're serious about protecting their data and the funds that are coming to them.

Yeah. Well, I think what we like to do is ensure the information that we're providing equals what the American public wants to know. And I think most of all, understanding what happens in our field office, what happens on the phone, and what happens on the web. And I think that's the way they transact with us. And then on the web, having them availability to do everything they can, including getting their benefit statement, right? And of course, not everybody can print it at home. But many can come in our field office and get that whenever they want. We're building better functionality that if they can't print it at home, but they have the web, it will print it right there for them and waiting for them. I think Social Security with over 100 million digital users and over 300 million Social Security numbers serving America is the number one personal identifier for everybody, and protecting that is first and foremost.

Yes. I think the first thing is management visibility. And so we built this tool, which is a great tool, and our technology is delivering more than it ever had, which allows all projects to have full visibility to all those engaged, and any date change or dollar economic change gets flashed immediately. So it's called SSA 360, but every project has an ROI to it, and we manage it in a diligent fashion. And I think that's a big governor to how we run the place. We look at the numbers, we ensure projects are on track, and we ensure it's getting the desired result.

No, I think you'll always have some balance of needing external expertise and internal expertise. That would be true everywhere in the world, not just here. I think it starts off with — and I'll give a shout out to our CIO. I think if you ask the great people who have spent their careers in Social Security, we actually have a technologist in charge of technology.

And I think there is no substitute for experience. As a matter of fact, he was a technologist for a payment company. And if you look at the heart of one of the main things we do, it's payments. And I think our CIO has done an outstanding job.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, I think all the above. And what you're highlighting is something that I think we should also work with the advocate community and create the right portal for them for their own individual situation so they have a basic statement that tells them everything they're asking. They don't have to navigate. And I'm happy to get the team to go look at that, go to the advocate community, make sure we have alignment on what good looks like and produce it.

Yeah.

Well, this sign was in all the offices: 'Appointment needed. Appointments are required for most services at Social Security.' I'm disappointed to hear about Ogden because we ripped them down and said nobody should ever be turned away. And so I need to go find out why that's happening there. The standard is walk-ins are accepted as is. Yes. If people want an appointment, we'll make them an appointment. But I don't think we should ever refuse a walk-in.

I got to go figure out what's going on there.

Yeah.

Well, it's broader than just that's an element of it, right? We have a system that is coming into effect that should just completely transform what this process is in terms of getting to decisioning a lot quicker. The whole objective is decisioning a lot quicker. Of course, if you went back over time, the size of a file has completely changed, but I think we could revert it all back. We will use AI in the process too to help us get information to those who need it a lot quicker than possible. So, we're in relentless pursuit on every indicator in the place to just continually get to a historic best norm. So, I have great expectations for the exchange. I have great expectations for what we're doing in the base build we're doing. And I think we should never talk about times going up but only down in the future for the rest of our life.

Thank you.

Over 300 million.

Well, I thought the first response — look, I'm the Commissioner of Social Security. It's a six-year term, and I understood that during that period of time, or at least I was hopeful, that we would solve this problem, right? So I came into this understanding we needed to fix something. I think the first thing was to work under the president's mandate to protect and preserve. And to protect and preserve meant to do exactly what we're doing, serve the American public better. So in fact, it would give you all the opportunity to think about what is right and hear from your constituents. And then lastly, I think higher quality costs less. So this idea, I don't really think of it as efficiency. I think about quality for the American public, and we should be able to do it with less fraud, less waste, and less abuse. And we see that in billions of dollars. So I thought that was job one, and empower you all to feel confident that we have something that can last for another 90 years in its way to operate, and then in fact say what are we going to do about it. And look, as a trustee, we produce a trustees report that tells everybody the facts.

Yeah, I think that let's make sure we got our facts right. I always like that. In 2024, in your district, the wait time in field offices was 77.8 minutes. The number produced before I was here, it wasn't my number, but we use the same exact methodology that we use there.

Today the wait time in your field offices are 18.6 minutes. That's 60 minutes less.

Congressman, this is a holistic thing we do serving Americans, right? Whether they call on the phone, whether they walk in the field office, whether they go on the web.

I think we amended that message. And by the way, we got that from an authority and we went back to the authority, right? If you want to make that what this hearing is about, that's kind of fine. We could talk about that one line. We can also talk about the fact that your wait time's gone down 76%. We can also talk about the fact that the field office visits are down 3%.

We addressed it four months ago when it occurred.

It's a top priority.

I've never actually thought that they would change backlogs, but I'm supportive of what you want to do, and I don't think those are the key. If that's your key driver to that, it's probably not the answer. We got to reduce backlogs always. That's all we ever do is reduce backlogs to the point where they're no longer backlogs, they're inventory.