Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) spent the first six weeks of the new Trump administration to make the federal government upside down. It has moved from agency to agency, access to sensitive data and payment systems, all on a suspected crusade to audit the government and stop fraud, waste and abuse. Doge posted some of his ‘findings’ on his website, many of which are folded.

But two federal auditors with years of experience, both of which have worked on financial and technical audits for the government, say that Doge’s actions are the furthest as what an actual audit looks like. Both asked to speak on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to the press.

“Honestly, to compare real auditing with what does do, there is no comparison,” said one of the auditors who spoke to Wired. “None of them are auditors.”

In September, in a speech during the presidential campaign, then -candidate Donald Trump said he would create a task force for the effectiveness of the government, led by Musk, which would do a ‘complete financial and performance -audit of the entire federal government’. Initially, Musk said he wanted to cut $ 2 trillion of the federal budget, more than the entire discretionary budget of $ 1.7 trillion. Musk has since tempered his ambitions and said it wants to cut $ 1 billion dollars on government spending. He still claimed that much of this money could be cut by identifying wastage, fraud and abuse, and that he continued to claim Doge’s cutting of agent staff and resources, all forming an audit.

Although there are certainly cases of the government’s money screened to fraud – an office for the government’s liability, published in 2024, estimates that the government is losing fraud between $ 233 billion and $ 521 billion each year – even to recover all spending will not hope to cut from the budget.

The auditors who spoke to Wired claim that Musk’s allegation is not just true, but that it seems that the existing processes have completely eluded to take off waste, fraud and abuse.

“An audit following the generally accepted government audit standards (Gagas), also known as a yellow book audit, is performed in accordance with the standards issued by the US government’s liability office,” says the first auditor. Audits can focus on the finances, compliance or performance of an agency. “This is the golden standard for how you audit the government.”

There are generally five phases of a gagas audit, tell the auditors Wired: Planning, Proof Collection, Evaluation, Reporting and Follow -up. Auditors work to define the scope of an audit, to identify all the appropriate laws and standards and come up with an audit plan. Next, auditors interview staff, review financial records and are combed by data, reports and transactions, documenting the entire road. From there, auditors will assess the information against policies or procedures to find out if there was some kind of alleged wastage, fraud or abuse and issued a report outlining their findings and offering recommendations. Often these reports are made available to the public. After an audit, the auditors can follow up the agency to ensure that changes are made.