Social Security Administration bans reading 'general news' at work

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has banned reading “general news” websites at work, The Hill has learned.

"Social Security employees should be focused on mission-critical work and serving the American people,” a Social Security spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Hill on Thursday.

“Therefore, we implemented additional restrictions to the categories of websites prohibited from government-furnished equipment, including online shopping, general news, and sports. Employees may request an exception if they have a business need for job-specific duties,” the spokesperson continued.

NBC News and The Washington Post both reported previously that there was an SSA email discussing employee website bans including for “general news,” which was confirmed by the statement for the agency.

The SSA recently said it was letting employees know about incoming “significant workforce reductions” while it got ready for “agency-wide organizational restructuring” as reports were coming forth on thousands of workers being potentially let go.

A week ago, the agency said offices that carried out functions not “mandated by statute may be prioritized for reduction-in-force actions that could include abolishment of organizations and positions, directed reassignments, and reductions in staffing.”

“The agency may reassign employees from non-mission critical positions to mission critical direct service positions (e.g., field offices, teleservice centers, processing centers),” the SSA said. “Reassignments may be involuntary and may require retraining for new workloads.”

The Trump administration has sought to dramatically reshape the federal government through actions like job cuts.

On Wednesday, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins confirmed that his department was preparing to cut about 72,000 jobs.

“Our goal is to reduce VA employment levels to 2019 in strength numbers, roughly 398,000 employees, from our current level of approximately 470,000 employees,” Collins said in a video statement. “Now that’s a 15 percent decrease. We’re going to accomplish this without making cuts to health care or benefits to veterans and VA beneficiaries.”

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