David Camp, NOSSCR CEO

As many of you already know, I know Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek and speak with him regularly. Many of the reports of staffing changes and DOGE access have been wildly inaccurate, and you can count on NOSSCR to remain engaged with SSA productively undeterred by a media frenzy and politicians using SSA as a prop.

On Tuesday, I met with President Trump’s nominee Frank Bisignano at his Fiserv headquarters in New Jersey. Mr. Bisignano is up for a full six-year term as Commissioner of Social Security, and our relationship will be of paramount importance for NOSSCR’s members. After a brief withdrawal for technical nomination reasons, his nomination was received in the Senate and referred to the Finance Committee on January 28th. A hearing has not yet been scheduled, but I expect it to occur in March. Of course, we’re educating Senators on questions to pose to Mr. Bisignano in their meetings and the confirmation hearing—but I appreciated Mr. Bisignano’s willingness to talk in person at his office. I found him to be engaging, even inspiring, regarding the potential for customer service and modernization improvements at SSA. Mr. Bisignano has an earned reputation for turning around failing companies, and for managing very large teams. He pointed out that his current company moves more money each day than SSA pays in a year, and that he’s comfortable with large scale efficiency transitions, fraud prevention, and public accountability. It’s clear that the SSA phone systems, initial and reconsideration backlogs, and antiquated processing of information will all be high priorities. He was interested in our proposals for the efficient sharing of health information—structures that could get NOSSCR’s members out of the business of acquiring and paying for paper or imaged medical records. AI will be a priority, and we talked about NOSSCR’s lead role in establishing guardrails while taking better advantage of the private sector’s capacity to innovate. Mr. Bisignano easily agrees with our position that SSA must do a better job prioritizing work incentives and expanding Ticket to Work. Lastly, SSA’s management structure needs to be reworked to address current priorities and to avoid—for example—having the disability claim process handled by five different components that don’t collaborate.

We in the NOSSCR community already know that SSA’s staffing and management structure has failed our claimant and beneficiary populations. While much of the media reporting lately has been inaccurate, the reality is nevertheless traumatic for those that have worked at SSA for entire careers—not to mention contractors that are accustomed to automatic payments despite lackluster performance. There has never been a state DDS that has met the regulatory timing benchmarks, and it is literally killing our clients. If you could see what I’m seeing, talk to Lee Dudek and Frank Bisignano as I have, and know what Drew Ferguson and I know of the political background to these changes—you’d be looking ahead to some improvements at our treasured SSA. It won’t all be smooth, but I’m eager to work with a Commissioner Bisignano and to reshape this agency into that old motto “world class service”—but this time without the crushing disability claim backlogs.

I can’t promise there won’t be big problems or pain caused by the current intrusion of politicians into what should be an independent agency. But, rest assured that we will be in the room, your voice everywhere it matters, and we will continue to defend and build a practice area that SSA and claimants need.