President Joe Biden tapped former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to lead the Social Security Administration, which oversees federal retirement and health benefits for more than 60 million Americans.

The agency has been without a fully installed commissioner since Biden fired Andrew Saul, a Trump appointee, last July. SSA has been led by Kilolo Kijakazi as acting commissioner in the interim.

“Governor O’Malley is a lifelong public servant who has spent his career making government more accessible and transparent, while keeping the American people at the heart of his work,” Biden said.

O’Malley, who was also the former mayor of Baltimore, comes to the nomination with decades of public service, a legal background and an unsuccessful presidential bid in 2016 that propelled him into the national spotlight. The Democrat’s two-term governorship ended in 2015 and is known for tying in public policy with data, which may help a beleaguered federal agency that is struggling to staff up and modernize its aging systems that pump out more than $1 trillion in benefits to tens of millions of Americans.

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“Most important for such a large federal agency, Martin also loves data and has a strong track record making government work better based on that data,” said Sen. Ben Cardin in a statement.

O’Malley is the author of a book detailing strategies for tech savvy executives who want to leverage technology in policymaking.

Social Security’s headquarters is located in Baltimore and employs about 12,000 of the agency’s total 60,000 workers.

Already, O’Malley has the support of the largest federal employee union, whose president, Everett Kelley, said O’Malley has been “a strong advocate for working people and labor rights.”

In 2015, Social Security Works, an advocacy organization, endorsed O’Malley for his proposals to expand benefits and tie the costs-of-living calculation to a metric that more closely measures expenses for seniors.

In the meantime, the agency is requesting that Congress to commit to a 10% budget increase for fiscal 2024. Commissioners serve six-year terms.

Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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