Tens of millions in grant funding awarded to the University of Illinois System was listed among the federal funding cuts on the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) “wall of receipts” on its website.

Among the grant cancellations published as of May 3, the UI System is involved in at least 25 records, affecting an estimated $105 million in federal funding with at least $49 million cuts, according to DOGE. 

Some award recipients from the University of Illinois System reported on DOGE’s ledger include:

• Soybean Innovation Lab, an agriculture laboratory in developing soybean production in Africa
• Keeping it Lite-2, a research project addressing HIV epidemic among sexual minority youth nationwide
• Center of Health Equity Research, a cancer health equity research consortium
• UNAM (Mexico) Joint Research Program, an educational program directed to 30 undergraduate students

Overall, as of May 3, the site claimed DOGE estimates saving $165 billion through cuts via contract, grant and lease terminations. However, the published receipts across the three categories account for only about $68.6 billion, which is roughly 41% of the claimed total.

One of the largest cancellations in the UI System was a $3 million grant from USAID to the Soybean Innovation Lab, with more than $2 million cut. The loss directly led to the lab’s closure and the layoff of 30 scientists. 

On April 17, the director of the lab, Peter Goldsmith, announced it received a private $1 million donation from an anonymous U.K.-based company. The grant allowed the lab to reopen for a limited time.

DOGE’s ledger lacks details, receipts

Among the 11,654 grants nationally as of May 3, 2,629 receipts also lack verifiable links, making up nearly 23% of grants termination. Instead, the links go to home page or lack information.

According to its website, DOGE is “working to upload all of our receipts in a digestible and transparent manner consistent with applicable rules and regulations.”

The original financial data was published by the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) for contracts and by USAspending for grants. The data source for lease terminations isn’t disclosed on the website, but the General Services Administration manages leases for the federal government.

In the ledger’s update on May 3, DOGE deleted 61 data entries of lease termination from the last update without explanation, according to a review by CU-CitizenAccess. 

The website said discrepancies may exist between the posted figures and the original documentation from the FPDS and USAspending due to a lag in reporting system updates.

Although the ledger provides links to the funding’s obligation process for contracts and grants, it consistently lacks data for many receipts. 

Of the 9,497 contract savings receipts, 35% lack links to the Federal Procurement Data System and 169 entries contain null data. Another 3,345 links redirect to the FPDS homepage; all are contracts with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and contain no vendor information, according to a review by CU-CitizenAccess.

Those unverifiable funding cuts make up over 35% of savings in the contracts. DOGE marked these vendors as “unavailable for legal reasons.”

Critics argue DOGE overstates savings

Besides releasing incomplete receipts, DOGE was also alleged to be overstating the savings by calculating the contract values that will not be obligated.

The number under value listed on the ledger refers to the potential expenditure including all potential extension, expansion and renewal options, which can span many years. The number listed under savings represents the difference between that potential value and the amount that was actually obligated.

For example, in the contract termination with Family Endeavors Inc., the value of $3.3 billion refers to the total potential expenditure. The listed savings of $2.9 billion reflects the value subtracted by the obligated funds prior to termination — about $427 million.

The data source, FPDS records, lists three financial figures: action obligation, base and exercised options value, and base and all options value. DOGE uses the base and all options value, the largest value, to calculate savings by subtracting the action obligation from it.

In other words, the value is based on assumption by including money that may not be obligated in the future. 

Data analysts at watchdog group Musk Watch have said a more accurate savings calculation would represent the value of the contract when it was actually canceled; the deduction of the base and exercised options value and action obligation, which will result in a much lower total savings. 

In the case of Family Endeavors Inc., DOGE calculated the difference between the obligated amount and the total contract value. When calculating using the base and exercised option value, this resulted in an overstatement of savings by more than $2 billion.

Watchdog group Musk Watch, which created a tool called DOGE Tracker to compile and visualize the department’s savings data. As of May 6, it said only 9.88% of the savings DOGE claims can be verified through this calculation.

Since the tracker’s release in February, DOGE’s ledger has been found to contain multiple errors, including listing contracts that were never impacted or had expired without intervention, and misreporting $8 million savings as $8 billion for a single contract.

Data errors and inconsistencies appear throughout DOGE’s ledger. On its website, DOGE contains several typos, including a misspelling of “discrepancies,” and appears to have an inconsistent number listed for contract items.

The ledger also mislabeled some grant recipients. In one case involving the termination of a grant awarded to Free the Slaves, Inc. by the Department of Labor, the recipient was incorrectly listed as “2000000” — the same as the grant’s dollar value.