Social Security Administration

The Social Security Administration touches more American lives than virtually any other federal agency. Created during the New Deal in 1935, the SSA administers retirement, disability, and survivor benefits for over 70 million people — nearly one in five Americans. Its online presence, anchored by my Social Security at ssa.gov, lets beneficiaries manage their accounts, check benefit amounts, request replacement cards, and review earnings records without visiting a field office. The agency processes tens of millions of transactions each year and manages one of the largest civilian IT infrastructures in the federal government.

SSA's digital infrastructure spans public-facing web portals, a backend mainframe environment handling benefit calculations and payment processing, and integration with the Treasury Department for direct deposit disbursement. My Social Security accounts use identity verification powered in part by Login.gov and ID.me, creating upstream dependencies that affect login availability when those third-party systems experience issues. SSA also maintains a sprawling network of field offices with local systems that interact with central databases.

When SSA's online systems are down, the effects are tangible and often time-sensitive. Beneficiaries are unable to check payment status or view their annual Social Security Statement. Applications for retirement, disability, or survivor benefits cannot be submitted online. Replacement Medicare or Social Security cards cannot be requested. Earnings record lookups fail. In some cases, when authentication is degraded, users cannot complete identity verification at all and are locked out of their my Social Security account entirely.

Outage.gg tracks real-time reports of SSA service disruptions from users across the country. If ssa.gov is down, my Social Security is throwing errors, or your account is inaccessible, the live status page shows whether the problem is widespread and when services are expected to recover.