Dog is doing the opposite of the government audit

Katie Dramond: True, available to the public, unlike Dog, despite the allegations made by Musk and even President Trump, that this is a transparent group to the maximum of the people who do this work. We do not actually know much about what they do, what they find, and the changes they make, less than journalists like you and many of your wireless colleagues and other news organizations that get this information and publish this. Now, I want a little backup because all this is the idea of ​​fraud, waste and financial abuse. It is something that Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed to be widespread, spread through government agencies that there is fraudulent spending, there are excessive waste. There is a misuse of the financial authority, and the financial authority by these agencies. Now, what you have reported during the past few months and in your role, how true is this claim?

Vitoria Elliot: There was a report from the Government Accountability Office, which covered the years 2018 to 2022, and found that there was already more than $ 200 billion of waste, fraud or abuse that occur. Thus, it is not something component, but in the context of the federal budget worth $ 7 trillion, this is not what breaks the bank. I do not think that anyone, democratic, or Republican, Dog admires or not, argues that this is a problem that we need to solve. This is very valuable. But one of the auditors I spoke to them mainly said that Dog could look at the current recommendations of IGS. They can search in the current outstanding investigations. They can pick up this work if they are really dedicated to this because there are already systems, and there are already reports on this topic. But from what the auditors who spoke to them said, they said this does not really seem to be what Dog is doing. And one of the other things that they said was many auditors who would be really happy to help them, to advise. They will be happy to work with them, they will be happy to bring young talents to their teams to make the auditing system more powerful. But Dog is really a kind of noble, it does not seem really interested in that.

Katie Dramond: right. Now, when talking about Dougi and the auditors to whom I talked about this story, they definitely did not have good words to say about how Duj did. We told us a little more about their impressions of Dog and their comment on some kind of what is happening under the auspices of this idea that Musk and Doge are mainly auditing the federal government. What do actual auditors think about it?

Vitoria Elliot: Yes, to give some context, first, a regular review, which includes such five different steps, so there are five steps to check. One of them is the place where you plan, and sit, as she says, “This is what we are looking for, this is the type of information that we will need to pursue.” You can determine the type of stakeholder, and those who will have to have an interview, because they often go to programs or systems that they may not fully understand. Therefore, it is almost some ethnographic. You have to enter, you have to do an interview with people, you must be like, “What is your job? What is this connected? What does this mean within your system?” You have to do this basic understanding to learn about the program or agency. Then you do the actual field work, which is, you go out, talk to people. In the case, for example, the things of the hurricane, they already sent the auditors, I think, to Puerto Rico to find out what is going on. You go to the systems, and do this type of human being on Earth. Once you do this, they collect all this information together in a report, they do this analysis. They speak to agencies, they say, “Hey, these are the problems we have found. You have an opportunity to correct these. These are our recommendations.” Then they present this to the agencies, to Congress, then continue to follow up. They will return and be like, “Hey, we recommended this thing. Have you fixed this problem?” There is a level of accountability to try to fix this thing. Therefore, there are very clear understandings within a government. What are the best practices in this, and all of these people do so. This takes from six to 18 months.