[Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson and Elizabeth Dwoskin at The Washington Post]

More "efficiency" from DOGE:

"Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online.

[...] The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to 7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology division responsible for the website and other electronic access."

These benefits are much-needed; people depend on them. In gutting the team that helps provide services, Musk and DOGE are putting peoples' lives at risk.

And this is just poor software development practice:

"Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said."

But, of course, perhaps destroying the actual utility of these services is the point.

#Democracy

[Link]