By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
The administrator of the Social Security Administration said he plans to transform how the agency handles phone calls and other systems within the agency by the end of this year.
“We’re bringing a massive technology effort to transform the servicing agenda,” SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano told CBS News. He added that the agency is going to “bring AI into the phone system” and that he is looking to have it “completed this year,” referring to artificial intelligence.
“We’re going to meet our beneficiaries where they want to be,” Bisignano, who was CEO of a financial services company before he was named by President Donald Trump to lead the SSA, told the news outlet. “You want to come into a field office? We will always be there. You want to meet us on the web? We will be there. And you want to meet us on the phone? We’ll be there.”
Bisignano didn’t say how AI would be used in the SSA phone system. He was responding to whether rolling out AI would help deal with the influx of calls and whether it would help less tech-savvy people over the phone.
The SSA says on its website that it gets about 390,825 calls per day and receives about 8.2 million calls per month, on average.
His statement to CBS News comes as the Department of Government Efficiency announced in May that it had completed a “major cleanup” of Social Security records after it was found that more than 12 million people aged 120 or older were still in the system.
“After 11 weeks, Social Security has finished this major cleanup initiative,” DOGE wrote in a post on social media platform X.
It added that some 12.3 million individuals listed as being aged 120 or older “have now been marked as deceased” in the agency’s records.
Bisignano told Fox Business at around the same time that the SSA’s records “were not very good,” which could be “the source of fraud.”
“The amount of people that were not alive that did not show on the system … was outstanding. Millions and millions,” he told Fox Business, adding that the work that DOGE did in the agency “was 100% accurate” in a bid to locate anything that could lead to fraud.
That’s because an active Social Security number that is “still alive in the system” presents the “opportunity for fraud,” he said.
Bisignano was confirmed about a month ago in a 53-47 vote in the Senate. Bisignano was sworn in earlier in May.
He succeeds Martin O’Malley, who resigned on Nov. 29, 2024. In the interim, the agency was led by Leland Dudek, following the brief and controversial tenure of Michelle King.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Bisignano said that he doesn’t have any intention of privatizing SSA.
“I’ve never heard a word of it, and I’ve never thought about it,” he said.
“It’s not a word that anybody’s ever talked to me about, and I don’t see this institution as anything other than a government agency that gets run for the benefit of the American public,” he also said in response to a question about the prospect.
Reuters contributed to this report.
