The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.

Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.

The contract, with a company called D&G Support Services, was to provide “program and technical support services” for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at ICE. The Trump administration has been purging diversity programs from the federal government.

By examining past versions of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million. According to the database, the contract was terminated about a week later. (For context, $8 billion is nearly the size of the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. But it is also clear that the government was not spending $8 billion on the contract. In the two and a half years since it was signed, $2.5 million had been spent; the contract appeared set to expire in 2027.

Even the $8 million is an upper bound on the amount saved by canceling the contract. Since $2.5 million had already been spent on the contract, according to data on USAspending.gov, that suggests that canceling it saved $5.5 million at most.

A spokeswoman for DOGE did not respond to a request to explain the department's accounting.

The $7.992 billion mistake was discovered simply because it was the first item The Upshot reviewed, after sorting the list by the savings amount.

Mr. Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur at the helm of the DOGE effort, recently acknowledged the group may make errors

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