Social Security Data Transparency Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
The Social Security Data Transparency Act restores public reporting on SSA operations. Within 90 days of enactment and monthly after that, the Commissioner must publish service metrics on an SSA public website. The required data includes first-contact resolution rates, claimant satisfaction by service channel such as field offices and the 800 number, 800-number volume and performance metrics, retirement and survivors claim processing metrics, disability insurance initial claim metrics, disability appeal processing times, disability hearing wait times and formats, and system outages that prevent SSA staff from doing their jobs. The bill also requires SSA to maintain a live tracker for the 800 number showing call wait time, callback wait time, callers on hold, and callers waiting for callbacks.
Who Benefits and How
Social Security claimants, disability applicants, retirement benefit applicants, advocates, journalists, congressional overseers, and watchdog groups benefit because they can see whether SSA service channels are improving or deteriorating. Field-office users and callers benefit indirectly if public metrics create pressure to reduce waits, speed claims, and fix system outages.
Who Bears the Burden and How
SSA operations staff must collect, validate, and publish detailed monthly metrics and maintain a live call-center tracker. SSA information technology staff must support public dashboards and outage reporting. Agency managers face more public scrutiny over delays, denial appeals, hearing backlogs, and service-channel performance.
Key Provisions
- Requires monthly public reporting of SSA first-contact resolution and claimant satisfaction by service channel.
- Requires detailed 800-number metrics including daily call volume, wait times, callback waits, answer speed, representative access, service time, busy rate, and callback handling.
- Requires retirement and non-disability benefit claim processing metrics.
- Requires disability insurance claim, appeal, and hearing metrics, including processing times and hearing formats.
- Requires a live public 800-number tracker for wait times, callers on hold, and callback queues.
- Requires monthly reporting of system outages that prevent SSA staff from performing job functions.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Requires the Social Security Administration to publish monthly public service-performance data, including first-contact resolution, channel satisfaction, 800-number call metrics, retirement and disability claim processing metrics, disability appeal and hearing metrics, a live 800-number wait tracker, and system outage counts.
Key Policy Areas
Social Security, Government Transparency, Public Benefits
Primary Purpose
Requires the Social Security Administration to publish monthly public service-performance data, including first-contact resolution, channel satisfaction, 800-number call metrics, retirement and disability claim processing metrics, disability appeal and hearing metrics, a live 800-number wait tracker, and system outage counts.
Policy Domains
Substantive provisions
Identified Gains
- Social Security claimants
- Disability benefit applicants
- Retirement benefit applicants
- Public benefits advocates
- Congressional oversight staff
Identified Costs
- SSA operations staff
- SSA information technology staff
- SSA field office managers
- SSA call center managers
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeMs. Salinas (for herself and Mr. Sorensen) introduced the following …
Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.
Introduced in House
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Disability benefit applicants, Retirement benefit applicants, Social Security claimants
SSA information technology staff, SSA operations staff
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology