Social Security shutters its civil rights and transformation offices

The Social Security Administration closed its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, charged with managing the agency’s civil rights, equal employment opportunity, harassment prevention and disability services at the agency, on Tuesday.

The day before, the agency shut down its Office of Transformation, set up in 2023 to work on agency-wide initiatives like removing requirements for wet signatures on SSA forms and launching digital signatures and electronic document uploads at the agency. Its closure leaves some with major questions about the future of work to move SSA online — including how the agency website will be updated moving forward.

Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek said in a statement that shuttering the civil rights office “advances the President’s goal to make all of government more efficient in serving the American public.” SSA is moving “statutorily required functions” to other parts of the agency, it said. 

Dudek was put in place last week following the prior acting head’s departure after clashing with Elon Musk’s team over access to sensitive government records. Dudek himself was under investigation, the Washington Post reported, for sharing unauthorized access to information with DOGE when he was put in the acting role. 

“President Trump has mandated the Federal government eliminate wasteful and inefficient offices, and the Office of Transformation was a prime example,” Dudek said. 

Employees in both offices were put on administrative leave, the agency said in its announcement of the two office closings. 

Their departure follows cuts to SSA’s headquarters and regional offices, although thus far the agency has largely been exempted from the sweeping workforce cuts pursued by the Trump administration, as GovExec has reported. 

The agency is at a 50-year staffing low, its former Commissioner Martin O’Malley told lawmakers last fall, which has ramifications for its ability to deliver key benefits and services. Thirty thousand people died while waiting for Social Security disability determinations during fiscal 2023, Nextgov/FCW reported last spring.

Feds in the transformation office received emails Monday informing them that they will be fired, one affected employee told Nextgov/FCW. SSA didn’t respond to questions on the status of the employees in affected offices.

“Your further employment at the agency would not be in the public interest,” read the memo emailed to them on Monday. They didn’t get any advance notice, the affected employee said. 

With the office’s elimination, it’s not clear what will happen to the agency’s website, the affected employee further told Nextgov/FCW, as that office housed the SSA team that works on SSA.gov, the online front door to the agency that provides critical benefits to millions of Americans.

Work to overhaul that website, which was recognized with a Service to the Citizen award in 2023, was ongoing. 

“If there's a website problem, I don’t know who's gonna fix it,” said Betsy Beaumon, the agency’s former chief transformation officer under the Biden administration who was recently chosen to receive a Fed100 award for her work last year. “There are some contractors who do some of the actual hands-on work, but the people that work with them are on this team.”

Beyond the website alone, the office also did key customer experience work, she said. 

“This was the only team who actively determined what digital services are actually needed at the agency,” Marcela Escobar-Alava, the agency’s former chief information officer, told Nextgov/FCW.