The Social Security Administration (SSA) has been expanding its use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to bridge the gap on creating customer experience improvements even as it faces staffing shortages and budget uncertainty, the head of the agency said this week.
SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley talked about the agency’s AI use during an April 23 webinar organized by Federal News Network.
He said SSA has deployed a “tool AI” – not a generative AI technology, that “allows us to really zero in, curate, and search large medical records.”
“We are doing things every day that improve the customer experience that take advantage of modern tools and technology,” said O’Malley.
While the use of traditional AI tools has allowed the agency to aim for customer experience improvements, SSA continues to face obstacles toward that goal in the form of staffing shortages and skimpy budgets, O’Malley said.
“However quickly we do that … we cannot cross that gulf between the low level of staffing and the high number of customers until Congress starts giving us an annual appropriations and budget hearing again, and allows us to return to the traditional 1.2 percent of benefits that we always operated on before 2017 in order to serve the customers,” argued O’Malley.
“Social Security operates traditionally – when we operated well with a high level of customer service – at 1.2 percent,” he said. “We’re now below that but the President’s budget is a solid step” that will help improve the agency’s customer service functions, he said.
“It’s a solid step in the right direction to being able to get back to that high level of customer service and the necessary staffing to provide that for fiscal year 2025,” O’Malley said.
