I handle a lot of bankruptcy cases. Business and individual debtors. On the individual side, the software we use for forms preparation has “1st SSN”, “2nd SSN” and “3rd SSN” fields in the debtor file. I wonder - how many people have 2-3 SSNs they are associated with? It must be much more common that I realized for software designers to accommodate it like that.
SSA is often upheld as a paragon of fiscal virtue because the overhead costs are a minuscule proportion of the total funds that pass through their operation each year (something like .65%) But that is deceptive metric due to the massive outlays under SS. I bet there will be 40-50% of the operations costs that can be eliminated by use of cutting edge IT and AI.
The objections are often couched in privacy concerns. The operational issues have no privacy concerns.
On the fraud side, appropriate protections can be implemented to allow data analysts to sweep through the system to answer questions like “How many individuals have 4 or more SSNs?”, without impacting the privacy rights of recipients.
Privacy? Not sure anyone has that anymore. Unless you go homeless and don’t rely on govt for anything.
Interesting post on multiple SSNs—thanks.
That may be the source of billions of dollars of fraud.