What’s in a name?: Social Security no longer known as SSA
What’s SSA? If you live in a small Wisconsin city about 50 miles north of Milwaukee and like to play baseball, you’d answer that it’s the “Sheboygan Softball Association.” If your hobby is flying gliders, you probably would say it stands for the “Soaring Society of America.” And if you are into earthquake studies, SSA is the “Seismological Society of America.”
I don’t think too many people would have associated “SSA” with the Social Security Administration. But, for years, that was our name, at least on the Internet. Our Web site address, or “URL,” was www.ssa.gov. But that all changed last month with the introduction of our new Internet address: www.socialsecurity.gov.
I think our Commissioner, Jo Anne B. Barnhart, said it best. “It just makes sense, and is good public service, to let people reach us by the name they all know. Social Security’s programs touch the lives of nearly every person in America, from the young to the old. Our Web site, www.socialsecurity.gov, offers online services for children and retirees, and for people at every stage of life in between.”
Along with our new Web site address, we’ve also redesigned almost the entire site to make it even easier to read and use. That’s an impressive feat because our Web site already was an award winner, generally considered one of the best and most useful in government. In the past, our homepage, which reflected the entire Web site, was organized by the programs we run. So you would have needed some idea of what you were looking for in order to navigate our site. But now when you visit our site, we help guide you to information you can use depending on where you are in your life – young, middle-aged, or nearing retirement – and what you’re interested in. In other words, if you are a 60-year-old giving some thought to retiring, click on “plan your retirement” to find helpful planning tools; we’ll also tell you about other benefits you might be eligible for.
And when you’re ready to apply for those retirement benefits, you can do that online, too. You can file for those benefits while sitting at your computer.And if you have a spouse, he or she can also file for spouse’s benefits online. Our online benefits application is one of the most popular Internet services we offer.
To find our newly redesigned Web site or to file for retirement or disability benefits online, go to www.socialsecurity.gov.