Social Security website keeps crashing, as DOGE demands cuts to IT staff
The worsening problems come as Elon Musk’s DOGE team pushes for more cuts at the agency, including in the department that oversees the website.
April 7, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDTToday at 5:00 a.m. EDT 10 mins
Rain showers pass over the Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, on March 20. (Photos by Wesley Lapointe/For The Washington Post)
By Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson, and Elizabeth Dwoskin
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 website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in.
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.
