The Social Security Administration said Tuesday it has corrected records tied to nearly 15% of all active Social Security numbers, calling it the largest cleanup of its database in the agency’s 91-year history.
The effort touched roughly 330 million U.S. citizens and nearly 390 million total records, according to figures the agency released in a statement. SSA says the project is part of a broader push under the Trump administration to tighten the accuracy of benefits data and curb fraud.
Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano, who also heads the IRS, framed the database as a core piece of federal infrastructure. “The Social Security Number database is our country’s books and records. The database’s accuracy is essential to maintaining integrity of government services for citizens,” he said. “This is the first time SSA has undertaken an effort of this scale.”
According to SSA, the agency added 17 million dates of death to records that had none, pulling from its own internal systems as well as Department of State data. It also updated about 25 million records that were missing citizenship information, using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) service.
Another 8.5 million records flagged for inaccurate citizenship status are still being worked through, Bisignano said. The agency says it has also added new internal controls meant to cut down on manual data-entry errors going forward.
Reuters, which first reported the figures Tuesday, noted that SSA administers benefits for tens of millions of older Americans and people with disabilities — a population directly affected by how clean or messy the underlying records are. President Trump has repeatedly pledged to root out fraud and waste in the system since returning to office.
Bisignano has described the project as reconciling SSA’s Numident master file, the agency’s core record of numberholders. In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, he said some records had listed numberholders as “150 or 160 years old,” adding that errors like that “create vulnerabilities.”
A Fraught Backstory
The cleanup builds on earlier action by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which in March 2025 marked roughly 3.2 million numberholders aged 120 and older as deceased.
That earlier move, along with this broader database overhaul, has drawn sustained criticism from Democrats concerned about accuracy and due process. A former SSA employee told Congress the agency had faced pressure to assign death dates to people who were still alive. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent Bisignano a letter demanding answers about the death-record changes. SSA has denied adding 2.7 million names to its Death Master File.
Separately, a federal judge has already blocked the administration’s use of the SAVE citizenship-verification database, a ruling that predates Tuesday’s announcement and raises questions about how SSA will proceed with the remaining 8.5 million disputed citizenship records.
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