OIG Report On Social Security Admin Phone Service Released
In a rare moment of clarity amid the bureaucratic fog surrounding federal services, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has emerged with a notable win — at least, if you believe the audit. After months of public skepticism, an independent review from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has validated SSA’s claims: the phone service numbers were right, and yes, the agency actually did get better at answering the phones in fiscal year 2025.
This all began when Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised a red flag back in June, concerned that the SSA was painting a rosier picture than reality allowed. Her suspicion centered around call wait times — some Americans had reportedly been stuck on hold for nearly 40 minutes the year before. Warren formally demanded an audit in July, setting off a high-profile showdown between the senator and SSA Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano, a Trump appointee and longtime business executive brought in to apply private-sector rigor to a public system.
The results of that audit, however, appear to vindicate Bisignano. The Inspector General found that SSA’s reporting of call metrics — including the controversial “Average Speed of Answer” — was accurate and even improved substantially throughout the year. According to the findings, call volume surged to 68 million in 2025, a 65% increase over the previous year.
Yet despite the pressure, wait times were slashed from a January peak of 30 minutes to just seven minutes by September. That turnaround coincided with sweeping operational upgrades: a cloud-based telecom platform, smarter automation, and more strategic use of field office staff.
Critics may still raise eyebrows at the metric itself. The “Average Speed of Answer” doesn’t measure the total time someone waits — only the time they’re actively on hold. If a caller chooses a callback, their wait time is recorded as zero. That quirk, while technically correct, does make for a cleaner number and raises the question: does it reflect experience or just efficiency?
Still, the numbers reflect a real shift. SSA deployed automation on a massive scale, from 300,000 automated calls per month in 2024 to nearly 3 million a month in 2025. With field office employees pulled into the national phone system during peak months, the agency was able to weather a particularly brutal January-March stretch that included tax questions, Medicare confusion, and the implementation of the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 — a law impacting over 3 million beneficiaries.
And while roughly 25 million calls didn’t result in service — either due to dropped calls, missed callbacks, or busy signals — the audit didn’t fault the SSA for hiding that fact. The numbers were disclosed, just not reflected in the wait-time metric, a distinction that highlights how performance metrics often obscure the more complicated truth.
Still, Warren is far from satisfied. In a pointed statement, she accused Bisignano of misleading the public and hiding behind sanitized numbers: “This new watchdog report reveals that true wait times were more than three times higher than what Commissioner Bisignano claimed,” she said, underscoring the 25 million dropped calls.
But Bisignano pushed back just as forcefully. “Senator Warren was completely wrong in everything that she was saying,” he told Fox News Digital, calling the audit “proof” that his leadership is producing results. He’s promising even more improvements in 2026 — with a goal of “double-digit improvements” across every performance metric.