Trump order calls for creation of DOGE-linked agency payment-tracking systems
Federal agencies will be required to build centralized systems to track every payment they issue for contracts, grants and other expenditures under an executive order issued Wednesday.
President Donald Trump’s order calls for each agency head to team with that agency’s assigned DOGE team lead in building the new IT system. Each payment would be submitted to the system and include “a brief, written justification” from the agency staffer who signed off on the expenditure.
The systems would include a built-in mechanism to allow the agency head to pause and quickly review payments that are submitted without a written justification.
As part of the buildout of the new system, agency heads and DOGE team leads will be required to review “all existing covered contracts and grants,” with the option to “terminate or modify” those agreements “where appropriate and consistent with applicable law,” the order states.
The review process should begin immediately and be completed within 30 days, per the order, with particular scrutiny given to “funds disbursed under covered contracts and grants to educational institutions and foreign entities for waste, fraud, and abuse.”
At the same time, each agency head and DOGE team lead are ordered to “conduct a comprehensive review” of all internal contracting policies, procedures and personnel, finishing that review within 30 days. During that time, agencies “shall not issue or approve new contracting officer warrants” unless an agency head “determines such approval is necessary,” the order states.
The order also calls for new agency guidance on signing new contracts or altering existing contracts. In the interim, new contracts could be approved by an agency head on a case-by-case basis. DOGE team leads, meanwhile, will be required to provide monthly reports on contracting activities to the agency head.
Once the in-house tracking systems are implemented, the order says federally funded travel will be banned “unless the travel-approving official has submitted a brief, written justification” in the system.
The order also freezes government-issued credit card use, effective immediately through the next 30 days, with exceptions made for payments used for disaster relief benefits or other critical operations as determined by the agency head.
Law enforcement officers, including those engaged in immigration enforcement — such as Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and contracts and grants connected to that work are exempted from Trump’s order. The same goes for classified information and classified information systems, per the EO.
