The SSA did not respond to a request from Wired on what the Doge operatives are working on in the agency.

In a meeting of Tuesday, US Doge Service Administrator Amy Gleason told staff that engineering affiliate engineers and some legacy-USDS workers would be to SSA to improve “identity voucher”, sources said in the meeting. The US Doge service is a permanent re -planning of the US digital service. Identity proof is the process that SSA uses to identify that users are who they say they are to access their benefits. The process includes the registration in identity programs such as the government’s own login.GOV or third-party services such as ID.ME.

According to a meeting last week, according to the Washington Post, Dudek, the acting commissioner of the SSA, told staff that the “doge people” were effectively responsible for the daily activities at the agency and “will make mistakes.” He also made it clear that he was in direct contact with the White House.

“I work for the president,” Dudek said according to a longer recording of the meeting obtained by Propublica. “I have to do what the president tells me to do. I had to make some difficult choices, choices I didn’t agree with, but the president wanted it, and I did. ‘

In February, Dudek set out plans to fire 7,000 employees at the SSA and close more than half of the agency regional offices, confirming that many of the SSA’s most senior staff departed. This week, the agency has reportedly abandoned the idea of ​​the telephone service for customers after the Washington Post reported on the plan.

The SSA houses a very complicated system built on decades-old technology and contains some of the most sensitive personal information held throughout the US government. According to experts, the threat of Doge engineers are errors in these systems.

Former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley warned last week, following the invasion of Doge, that the SSA system could see ‘collapse’ within months and that recipients would see a break from benefits. SSA programs will continue to function and function without disruption. “

“It is a valid fear that personally identifiable information will be filtered out or the source code that is wasted and strict with the necessary controls,” John McGegging, a former SSA employee who worked with the agency for almost four decades.

In addition, Doge imposed a $ 1 spending limit on the federal credit cards, which led to some local SSA offices experiencing trouble buying basic supplies, including paper and toner, according to details dressed by one SSA employee.

“We started with rationing,” said the source. “People like to ask for four copies of their benefits verification letter. We gave them one and told them to make their own copies. “

The provision of sign language tolls for appointments to the SSA were also interrupted due to the $ 1. spending limit. “We must go back to the client and tell them that we cannot provide an interpreter, although everything on our website says that we will provide it,” the source said, referring to an incident that happened this week.

SSA staff is also unable to order death certificates, which is used to verify whether someone is dead within the system or not, according to a post reviewed by Wired.

The source added that the office is also not able to express the company that expresses the mountains of documents it expresses daily, which causes the fear to be leaving paper with very sensitive personally identifiable information about the office soon.

Timothy Marchman contributed reporting.