The Social Security Administration is cutting staff from its communications office, and will rely on social media posts instead of press releases to update the media and the public.
Regional SSA offices, each representing several states, will no longer have fully staffed public affairs offices, because of the agency’s mass reassignment of employees to field offices.
SSA Midwest-West (MWW) Regional Commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis told employees in a call Thursday that those regional offices will no longer issue press releases or “Dear Colleague” letters to advocate groups.
“Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public — formerly known as Twitter,” Kerr-Davis said. “This will become our communication mechanism.”
Elon Musk, the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, bought Twitter in October 2022, and rebranded it as X.
“If you’re used to getting press releases and Dear Colleague letters, you might want to subscribe to the official SSA X account, so you can stay up to date with agency news,” Kerr-Davis said. “I know this probably sounds very foreign to you — it did to me as well — and not what we are used to, but we are in different times now.”
SSA is centralizing its process for responding to all inquiries, except those coming from members of Congress. For non-congressional inquiries, SSA regional offices will send their draft responses to SSA’s deputy commissioner of operations for review.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that SSA technicians received an email that read: “Effective immediately, do not respond directly to any public or congressional inquiries.”
The downsizing of SSA’s communications shop comes as the agency is reassigning about 700 employees to field office positions nationwide.
SSA is relocating employees from its headquarters and regional offices, to minimize the need for layoffs under a Reduction in Force (RIF).
Kerr-Davis said the RIF will target SSA headquarters and regional office employees, but will not impact front-line field office employees.
“The reassignment to the front line is so that people can preserve employment. And then hopefully, at some point in the future, once we get through the RIF, we can build up some sort of a regional office again,” she said.
An SSA spokesperson told Federal News Network on Friday that “SSA continues to shift its workforce to positions that directly serve the public.”
“We are going through a reevaluation of communications and will continue communicating with the public,” the spokesperson said.
The reassignments will lead to major staffing cuts to regional offices. Kerr-Davis said the MWW regional office has about 550 employees now, but will only have about 70 employees under the new “skinny regional office” model.
“Won’t losing subject-matter experts lead directly to fraud, waste and abuse? Yes,” Kerr-Davis told employees. “Things are going to break, and they’re going to break fast. We know that, but hopefully we’ll be able to get some support.”
Kerr-Davis added that the reassignments will be a “welcome addition” for understaffed field offices. But in many cases, reassigned employees will work in less senior positions.
“I can only imagine how this shift might make them feel, after years of dedicated service in their prior roles. They are used to being experts in their field, and we’re asking them to take on new responsibilities,” she said. “For some, it’s going back to work they used to do a long time ago, which may look very different.”
Meanwhile, SSA is once again walking back plans that would have limited the agency’s level of phone support to beneficiaries.
SSA planned to eliminate an option for individuals to verify their identity over the phone to receive retirement benefits or request direct deposit changes. Under these changes, beneficiaries would have to show up in person at a field office or set up a “my Social Security” account online.
SSA was also looking to partner with the Postal Service and allow SSA beneficiaries to verify their identity in person at thousands of post offices across the country.
On Wednesday, SSA wrote on X that it won’t limit any options for phone support, but will “perform an anti-fraud check on all claims filed over the telephone and flag claims that have fraud risk indicators.”
These changes will go into effect on April 14.
SSA’s Office of Program Integrity is developing an algorithm to flag “anomalous” claims filed over the phone. SSA technicians are instructed to put tele-claims on hold for three days, in order for the algorithm to screen the claims.
Nearly 73 million Americans rely on SSA for retirement, disability, Medicare and other benefits.
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