Elon Musk鈥檚 Department of Government Efficiency has repeatedly posted error-filled data that inflated its success at saving taxpayer money. But after a series of news reports called out those mistakes, the group changed its tactics.
It began making its new mistakes harder to find, leaving its already secretive activities even less transparent than before.
Musk鈥檚 group posted a new set of claims to its website March 2, saying it had saved taxpayers $10 billion by terminating 3,489 federal grants.
Previously when it posted new claims, DOGE, Musk鈥檚 government-restructuring effort, had included identifying details about the cuts it took credit for. That allowed the public to fact-check its work by comparing its figures with federal spending databases and talking to the groups whose funding had been cut.
This time, it did not include those details. A White House official said that was done for security purposes.
The result was that the group鈥檚 new claims appeared impossible to check.
The New York Times, at first, found a way around the group鈥檚 obfuscation. That is because Musk鈥檚 group had briefly embedded the federal identification numbers of these grants in the publicly available source code. The Times used those numbers to match DOGE鈥檚 claims with reality and to discover that they contained the same kind of errors that it had made in the past.
Musk鈥檚 group later removed those identifiers from the code and posted more batches of claims that could not be verified at all.
That shift was a major step back from one of Musk鈥檚 core promises about his group: that it would be 鈥渕aximally transparent.鈥�
The website is the only place where this very powerful group has given a public accounting of its work. That accounting is still incomplete: It itemizes only a fraction of the money that the group claims to have saved, $115 billion as of Wednesday. But it is extremely valuable, providing a window into the group鈥檚 priorities, and revealing its struggles with the machinery and terminology of government.
If the group is now going to fill its site with uncheckable claims, then it loses its value.
Noah Bookbinder, president of the left-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the removed information appeared to be a reaction to reports about DOGE鈥檚 errors.
鈥淭hey responded by giving less information publicly, so that it鈥檚 harder to question them,鈥� Bookbinder said, 鈥渨ithout doing anything to suggest that they鈥檙e actually correcting the mistakes or learning from them.鈥�
Musk鈥檚 group began releasing its data on what it called its 鈥渨all of receipts鈥� in mid-February and started by detailing the savings it had achieved by canceling federal contracts. Those posts contained mistakes that seemed to indicate a lack of familiarity with the government that the group is trying to overhaul.
The group posted a claim that confused billions with millions, triple-counted the savings from a single contract and claimed credit for canceling contracts that had ended under President George W. Bush.
DOGE deleted some of its largest claims about the savings from canceled contracts after news reports pointed out that they were wrong.
Nonetheless, that list of canceled contracts still contains errors. On Wednesday, the group was still claiming credit for saving $1.9 billion by canceling an IRS contract for tech help. But that contract was canceled under President Joe Biden.
The website posted it, deleted it, then restored it. The group has not responded to questions about why either time.
The new, harder-to-trace set of claims deal with another kind of federal spending: not contracts, but grant payments. Those disbursements are often made for services performed by a nonprofit or nongovernmental organization, such as those affiliated with the United Nations.
The public-facing website displayed only a few details about each grant, including the name of the agency that gave out the grant and the dollar amount saved after cancellation. That is not enough to identify which grants it was referring to. However, the website鈥檚 source code listed identifiers for each of the terminated grants.
The group deleted this identifying information from the code later in the week. But the Times had previously downloaded the code before that change was made and used the identifiers to match the group鈥檚 claims with real grants.
At least five of the 20 largest 鈥渟avings鈥� appeared to be exaggerated, according to federal data and interviews with the nonprofits whose grants were on the list.
The largest item on the list was savings of $1.75 billion, which the group said it achieved by cutting a U.S. Agency for International Development grant. But the organization that got the grant 鈥� a public-health nonprofit called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance 鈥� said that information was wrong twice over.
For one, the grant had not been terminated. Second, the government had already paid out all the money it owed. So even if the grant had been terminated, the savings would have been $0.
In other cases, Musk鈥檚 group seemed to misunderstand a key figure in USAID grants.
Nonprofits said these grants often contain a ceiling value 鈥� an upper limit on what the government might pay. But the groups said that this top amount is not always guaranteed. In some cases, the actual payments are worked out separately, they said, and often total far less.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not a promise, in any sense,鈥� said Traci Baird, chief executive of a nonprofit called EngenderHealth.
In her group鈥檚 case, DOGE said it had saved $83.6 million by terminating EngenderHealth鈥檚 grant to fund family-planning work in the developing world. Baird said Musk鈥檚 group seemed to have wrongly treated the grant鈥檚 $89.8 million ceiling as an IOU.
In reality, she said, the government had promised her group $1.2 million in funding, of which her group had already been paid $500,000. So the real savings of terminating her group鈥檚 grant was about $700,000.
The White House official said it was still important that Musk鈥檚 group terminated these contracts because they might have resulted in more spending beyond what had already been promised.
鈥淚t is important to highlight contracts are canceled to save money in future fiscals,鈥� the White House official wrote in an email, meaning fiscal years. The official asked not to be named, to discuss the details of DOGE鈥檚 work.
But Baird and other nonprofit executives said it was incorrect to say that DOGE had saved money that the government had not yet agreed to spend.
鈥淚t could have been savings, but only if it could have been spent,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e had no promise of it.鈥�
The wall of receipts鈥� list of canceled grants has now grown beyond the initial set that the Times was able to fact-check.
At the same time that the group removed the grant identifiers, it added another 2,800 entries.
鈥淒escriptions are forthcoming,鈥� the group鈥檚 website said.
On Wednesday, a week later, the descriptions were still not there, but the group published another update, which brought the total number of terminated grants listed to 7,488, totaling $17 billion in claimed savings.
鈥淭here is no reason that they should not be putting out the specifics and details behind what they鈥檙e cutting,鈥� said Gary Kalman, executive director of the anti-corruption nonprofit Transparency International U.S. 鈥淭hey are saying that they are doing things that are long overdue and widely supported by the public. If that鈥檚 true, then wouldn鈥檛 you want to make sure that you鈥檙e touting the cuts that you make?鈥�
This article originally appeared in .
