The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) detailed work reduction plans and efforts to implement artificial intelligence in a new memo sent to staff on Tuesday, while also acknowledging he has made mistakes during his brief time leading the agency.
Leland Dudek took over the agency in mid-February when he was installed after the previous leadership resigned after clashing with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over access to SSA data. The agency is responsible for sending out tens of millions of Social Security benefit payments to senior citizens and others each month.
“I have made some mistakes,” he wrote in a memo, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner. “I will continue to make mistakes, but I will learn from them.”
In one incident, Dudek had to rescind an order that would have required parents in Maine to sign up their newborns for Social Security numbers at federal offices rather than at hospitals.
Dudek acknowledged the agency has seen “an unprecedented level of media coverage, some of it true and deserved, while some has not been factual and painted the agency in a very negative light.”
In recent weeks DOGE has taken a chainsaw to the agency’s operations. At a time when SSA’s staffing is at a 50-year low, the agency announced plans to cut up to 12% of its workforce. It plans to close six of its 10 regional offices. The agency has offered early retirement and other incentives, including payments up to $25,000, to the entire staff.
In the memo, Dudek said there was “successful processing” of buyouts, as the agency looks to decrease its workforce by about 7,000 employees.
Dudek said 2,700 Social Security employees signed up for that program; 2,000 were deemed eligible, while more than 1,400 have signed their voluntary separation agreements.
The agency is in a “good position to avoid reliance on involuntary reductions in our workforce for this fiscal year,” Dudek wrote, adding that “we will continually assess our ability to meet our top priority to serve the public and use strategies such as reassignment to meet demand.”
The acting commissioner outlineed an action plan for the agency over the next three months. He details efforts to “improve customer service,” zero-in on “fraud and waste,” and “optimizing and empowering” the workforce.
Dudek’s memo also mentions increasing anti-fraud efforts, “leading with establishing state-of-the-art methods for identity proofing, which enables the public to securely interact with us online or over the phone.”
Dudek’s plan came after reports of a separate internal SSA memo on March 13 that detailed a proposal to force customers to file for benefits in person at a field office rather than over the phone in an effort to mitigate “fraud risks.”
The proposal was first reported by Popular.Info, which published screenshots of the memo which was signed by acting deputy Social Security commissioner for operations Doris Diaz.
“This would be potentially devastating,” said one SSA employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly on the situation. “There have been memos circulating with warnings from various deputy heads to the Acting Commissioner that this would create a bottleneck at field offices and would result in a sudden spike of in-person requirements that current staffing would be unable to address in a timely manner.”
The internal memo sent to staff on Tuesday said it plans to use artificial intelligence for online forms and signatures and to “augment administrative/technical writing.” The agency is also “exploring ways to implement AI — in a safe, governed manner in accordance with OMB’s FedRAMP guidance — to streamline and improve call resolution.”
The Senate Finance Committee will hold a confirmation hearing next week for a financial tech executive, Frank Bisignano, who was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the agency on a permanent basis.
This is a developing story.
