Highlights from the Social Security Administration FY 2025 Budget Request

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget request last month, including spending plans and details for the Social Security Administration (SSA). OMB also posted details of SSA’s IT portfolio investments to the IT Dashboard.

FY 2025 Discretionary Budget

The Social Security Administration has requested $15.4B in total discretionary budget authority for 2025, which would be a $1.2B increase from the FY 2024 final appropriated level, which was settled on by Congress weeks after the FY 2025 budget was released. This FY 2025 total request includes $9.9B in base discretionary funding, $700M above the FY 2024 estimated level presented in OMB’s budget documents, which was formulated while SSA was operating under Continuing Resolution (CR).

Funding highlights include:

• Includes $8.7B for payroll costs, approximately $700M above the FY 2024 Continuing Resolution (CR) level, to fund the employees who provide direct service to the public. Increases include, +$265M for field offices, +$79M for teleservice centers to reduce wait times, +$85M for Processing Centers and +$890M for hearings offices, respectively, to address backlogs.
• Allots $1.9B in program integrity funding for dedicated PI work to provide effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars, $52M above the FY 2024 Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) level.
• Requests $121.3M for the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), an increase of $6.6M over the FY 2024 CR level. The funding covers core auditing mission activities and operations, while also building data analytics capacity, increasing data-driven decision-making, investing in IT and automation tools and building and strengthening the workforce.
• Requests $91M for research activities, $5M more than the FY 2024 CR level, to fund continued data development and dissemination, modeling efforts, administrative research, evaluations of agency programs and initiatives and retirement and disability policy research.

Information Technology – Total IT and New Development Budgets

The SSA is requesting nearly $2.5B for IT spending for FY 2025, more than $261M (+12%) above the FY 2024 enacted level and almost $184M (+8%) above the final FY 2023 IT budget. SSA’s budget overview document notes they are assigning nearly $1.7B of these top-line IT funds for IT services, an increase of over $200M from the FY 2024 enacted level, to maintain and modernize IT infrastructure and increase digital and automated services.

Within the total $2.5B top-line IT request, the new SSA IT budget provides new development spending, known as Development, Modernization and Enhancement (DME), of more than $850M. This DME accounts for roughly 35% of their total FY 2025 IT budget – on par with the FY 2024 proportion and nearly three percentage points higher than in FY 2023. The FY 2025 DME level is $125M (+17%) above FY 2023 and $90M (12%) above FY 2024. (See table below.)

Deducting the DME funding from the total IT budget reveals over $1.6B in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding for FY 2025, which is an increase of $59M from the FY 2023 O&M level and $171M above the FY 2024 O&M level. O&M funding accounts for just over 65% of the SSA IT budget for FY 2025, which is the same proportion as for FY 2024 and about 3% lower in proportion than it was for FY 2023, mirroring the DME budget relative proportions.

Noteworthy IT Programs

To meet its mission objectives and support larger agency priorities, SSA continues to pursue IT modernization efforts. Below are the six largest IT budget lines that each garner more that $100M within SSA’s FY 2025 request.

• Data Center and Cloud Standard Investment – The Data Center and Cloud standard investment provides the IT Infrastructure for SSA's data center facilities, including technical support services, technology refreshes, and maintenance of the agency's IT hardware, and software. This investment receives a $110M increase above the FY 2024 enacted level to reach $717M for FY 2025. This initiative contains 24% ($174M) in Development, Modernization and Enhancement (DME) funding.
• Network Standard Investment – The Network standard investment provides data, voice, video teleconferencing, electronic services, equipment, access arrangements, cable and wiring to manage, maintain, enhance and refresh network and telecommunications systems. At $430M for FY 2025, Network has $90M in growth over the FY 2024 level and 27% ($116M) is for DME efforts.
• IT Security & Compliance – This investment captures the costs associated with IT Security resources setting policy, establishing process and means, and measuring compliance and responding to security breaches. The $262M requested for FY 2025 is $36M above the FY 2024 enacted level and is 54% DME funding.
• End User Standard Investment – The End User standard investment provides IT resources such as productivity software and desktop, laptop and other computing equipment which SSA requires to meet its workload demands. The $244M requested for FY 2025 is $33M below the FY 2024 enacted level. DME accounts for 18% of the FY 2025 funding request.
• IT Management – This budget line covers IT Management, Strategic Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Capital Planning, Project Management Offices, IT Budget/Finance, IT Vendor Management, 508 Compliance, General IT policy/reporting, and IT Governance. At $149M for FY 2025 IT Management sees an increase of $11M (+8%) from FY 2024. This investment line is 97.2% O&M funding with only 2.8% slated for DME.
• Application Standard Investment – This investment builds enterprise-wide software to support SSA’s IT operations, including the analysis, design, development, code, test and release services associated with application development projects. It receives $145M for FY 2025, a $12M increase from FY 2024, and consist of 93% DME funding.

IT Modernization Activities

Looking beyond the above top six of SSA’s large enterprise-level IT initiatives, one will see a theme of IT modernization emerge among several of the remaining medium-size IT investments that receive program budgets in the $6M to $79M range. These comparatively smaller initiatives focus on maintaining or modernizing SSA applications supporting core mission area, such as supplemental security income (SSI), benefits, disability claims processing and enterprise financial management. Some initiatives are seeking to build greater capabilities in data analytics, business intelligence, electronic citizen services and other areas.

Five programs with “modernization” their program names address these priority mission areas: Benefits Modernization, Disability Modernization, Service Delivery Modernization, Data Modernization, Earnings and Enumeration Modernization. Together, these initiatives account for nearly $158M for FY 2025, and all consist of 100% DME funding but one, Disability Modernization (92% DME.)

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For more analysis on the FY 2025 Federal Budget check out our report, FY 2025 Federal Budget Request: Priorities and Opportunities.