This year’s most-read stories are DOGE and DOGE-like contract cancellations at agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense and Homeland Security.
Our story with the highest number of page views illustrates one of the complaints about DOGE — its propensity to exaggerate both the value of the contracts it cancelled and claimed savings.
In February, DOGE posted to its “Wall of Receipts” that it had cancelled a $1 billion SSA contract with Leidos. That was big news. Leidos declined to comment and SSA was unreachable.
We ran a story after that announcement from DOGE, whose claims fell apart within days. I got some calls from folks saying it did not sound right.
After some digging, I found Federal Procurement Data System reports that showed Leidos had already been obligated over $803 million in work under that contract.
DOGE then changed the Wall of Receipts to say the savings were $231 million after cancelling the contract, but that was wrong too.
It turned out that DOGE had cancelled a single task order worth $560,000 for Leidos to redesign a form allowing the choice of X for someone who isn’t male or female.
Remember that DOGE never apologizes or admits mistakes. It just stealth-changes the numbers.
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