The Social Security Administration serves as a model of organizational transformation, agility and service excellence, built on continuous improvement and forward-thinking strategy
In 2025, we are recognized by the public and across government for our agility and effectiveness in fulfilling our mission. We are forward-looking and adapt to change in serving our vast array of customers while being good stewards of taxpayer dollars through efficiency and continuous improvement. We continually look for ways to build our customer and employee engagement and measure the impact of these strategies. We use technology and analytics as well as interactive engagement to understand our customers' and employees' needs when making process, policy, and service delivery decisions. We serve our customers quickly and efficiently by securely sharing and receiving information such as health records digitally and seamlessly across agencies.
We meet the changing needs of our customers and keep pace with the transitions they experience in their lives. Our customer-centric infrastructure relies on broad data exchanges and smart policies and processes. We listen to our customers and put customer choice first.
Our 2025 organizational structure is driven by customer needs and designed around customer preferences, which include a local community presence. Our agency's infrastructure provides greater workplace flexibility while providing immediate access to our knowledgeable employees. Our organizational structure aligns our resources to best serve our customers and sustain an engaging and innovative work environment.
We understand and design the entire customer experience by relying on data and analytics tools to improve our processes, policies, and service delivery. By capturing and evaluating historical data, we use predictive analytics to identify and model the future needs of our customers. Increased Open Data information about our programs and performance leads to better informed customers who are able to help us improve services. Our employees have access to real-time, comprehensive data to help us better serve our customers. Data management, business intelligence, and analytics tools enhance quality and performance.
We routinely evaluate how we deliver services to our customers based on their changing needs. Customer and employee feedback drives continuous improvement, and we share best practices in real-time to sustain superior customer service. Through analysis of our business processes, we identify opportunities to reduce areas of inefficiency or inadequacy, including processes that are obsolete, under-performing, high-risk, or ineffective. We use customer input to expand, modify, and implement a wide range of service options to meet their diverse needs and preferences. Our operating environment is flexible and takes into account constantly changing workloads and our unique customer base.
Our program rules are simplified to provide clear meaning for both customers and employees, thus enabling efficient processing of benefits. We routinely review regulations and policies to remove outdated provisions that have outlived their usefulness. Our more flexible decision-making and greater efficiency is driven by a simplification of our internal and external processes. We regularly engage internal and external stakeholders to evaluate and evolve policy. Through our strong understanding of the customer's life journey and by focusing on changes in the larger environment, we are recognized as a leader in social insurance policy. We are committed to providing accurate, high-quality public policy research to help shape the future of our programs and support the creation of sound policy.
The Social Security Administration leads the federal government in the use of advanced techniques to identify fraudulent behavior. We continuously monitor our transactions to identify those that demonstrate intent to defraud us. We respond quickly and decisively to prevent and detect fraud, to collect money stolen from the American taxpayers, and to prosecute the perpetrators. We demonstrate that we have zero tolerance for fraud. Our information exchanges lead in being the most secure in government and the private sector. We model the best practices in cybersecurity and fraud prevention. As a result, we have our customers' trust.
Real-time earnings reports and timely information enable us to make the right payments at the right time, thus preventing over- and under-payments. Technology and data analytics give us faster access to more and better data. We have also streamlined our processes and procedures to minimize errors. We continuously monitor our transactions for potential program abuse to respond quickly to the possibility of incorrect payments. Our customers have access to secure real-time information through the method of their choice, with new ways to access and share information. Our customers understand their reporting responsibilities and they report changes through the method of their choice, including in field offices, electronically, and over the telephone. We emphasize the importance of preventing underpayments, recognizing that we serve the most vulnerable in our society and our payments are often their only or major source of income.
We receive electronic health records to fully adjudicate disability cases and significantly expedite claims processing. We are able to assess individuals' conditions and program eligibility statuses continuously through our ability to retrieve and evaluate medical records automatically. We are able to significantly improve decision-making and information accuracy, and have eliminated the hearing backlog for our disability customers. Our employees have access to information required to make smart and well-informed determinations and administer accurate payments. Claims are processed quickly and accurately.
We lead multiple data exchange communities of practice across government, working collectively to anticipate the data needs of customers of employees. We partner with federal, state, local, tribal, and international government partners, as well as the private sector, to receive and share data in a secure and seamless manner. Our data-sharing activities supply accurate, relevant and real-time data to prevent improper payment and ensure integrated customer service for social insurance programs and external partners.
"Make it more convenient for customers to do business with SSA, whenever and however they choose."
- National Council for Social Security Management Associations
"Social Security should be organizationally flexible and challenge the status quo to embrace new technologies around data integration and Health IT."
- Social Security Executive
"The most important measure of Social Security customer service delivery is First Contact Resolution."
- Social Security Employee
