Comment by FergusArgyll

Comment by FergusArgyll 3 days ago

6 replies

This is inaccurate. In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly.

matwood 3 days ago

Except DOGE (at the time of this article) kept their claim of saving $8B and pointed at the old contract to make their stats look better.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...

The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.

Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth $8B?

  • FergusArgyll 3 days ago

    "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...

    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. "

    -NYT TFA

    So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2 years, DOGE fixes it.

    Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."

    • matwood 3 days ago

      It was a typo. No one was paid that amount and wouldn't have been paid that amount. If fixing a typo in a reporting system is a huge win for you I guess...ok.

wat10000 3 days ago

Oh, so you mean they weren’t incompetent, they knew the correct figure but deliberately lied about it?

  • FergusArgyll 3 days ago

    No, the DOGE website scrapes from the FPDS DB. The DB wasn't updated immediately. Like I quoted in an adjacent comment "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."

    Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it on a non-political website.

    I just want to point out one more thing: DOGE didn't advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings