The Chairman of the FCC is praising the agency’s initial findings and anticipated savings resulting from a top-to-bottom review of its contracts — a task carried out under an executive order from the White House drafted by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Brendan Carr says the contract review is consistent with President Trump’s Executive Order 14222, “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative.”
And, the “DOGE” initiative linked to Tesla founder Elon Musk was heralded by Carr, as the FCC’s initial work is “an important step towards ensuring long-term efficiency and maintaining our focus on the FCC’s core responsibilities.”
The contract review saw a focus on identifying areas of redundancy and overspending. “To support this effort, the FCC stood up an internal DOGE team composed of FCC staff and coordinated with the government’s DOGE representatives,” the Commission said.
For Carr, delivery of great results in an efficient manner is a key goal for his chairmanship of the FCC and “that starts with being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.” As such, from Day One, “we have been combing through every FCC contract to eliminate redundancies and wasteful spending.”
No stone is being left unturned, Carr said. How much is the FCC intending to slice from its expenses?
“To date, we have reduced more than $567 million in authorized contract spending, including by ending bloated or unnecessary IT contracts,” Carr said.
Indeed, through a combination of scaling down and terminating contracts, the FCC has reduced the total contract ceiling value by more than $567 million.
This figure, the Carr Commission says, represents cumulative savings from eliminating spending authorization under numerous contracts over multiple years.
Furthermore, in the near term, the elimination or modification of contracts has generated more than $6.7 million in savings for the remainder of 2025 from the cancellation of obligated spending.
This effort has also generated more than $21.1 million in savings for 2026, effectively reducing planned contract spending for 2026 by 20%, the FCC said.
Contract cancellations and modifications thus far have included a wide range of agency work.
Specifically, the review resulted in savings and efficiencies from the elimination or reduction of contracts for redundant or duplicative IT services, lightly used periodicals and press, unnecessary hog trapping services, tasks more efficiently done in-house, IT licenses exceeding the number of active users, and projects completed ahead of schedule or without exhausting the planned budget, among other circumstances.
The FCC’s review effort remains ongoing.
