I haven't been tracking this closely, but it looks like they've identified a total of $2bn of cuts. Zero fraud, zero waste. It takes a lot more work to identify the waste, you need to understand the systems properly and that takes time, it's not Musk's MO. If you said Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates were doing it, I would have a bit more respect. Musk isn't known for efficiency or quality systems at all. So far, DOGE seems to have focused on big headlines of 'we found a spurious $80bn contract' that turns out to be an $80m contract that was never signed anyway.
When you work in the public sector in the UK, waste per se isn't the problem generally (though I'm sure others will have more and different experience to me). I remember an early contract I did with the NHS about 25 years ago that has stuck in my mind. They had an idea for the system, we did the process engineering, designed a system and proposed it. It went through various levels of management within the trust, got changed, changed, added to and reimagined. We redid the process engineering, redesigned the system, they changed it again and went back to basics, we did due diligence and reverted to initial plan, got the go ahead, built the system and then the trust decided to make another change. We redesigned and the rebuilt the system before eventually deploying more or less the same system we proposed in the first place. Initial contract was for £25m, they ended up paying £122m due to faffing around. All of these people were passionate, largely effective and dedicated to healthcare at an efficient cost. Streamlining decision making, creating decision frameworks maybe. I'm honestly not sure how to solve this one!
I've long since moved on from this career, but I still have friends that work in consulting and many public sector contracts follow the same pattern. The politicians I dealt with were on the whole there to make good decisions for the people and were public servants. I did have the misfortune of dealing with Michael Gove once though. Yuck. Even worse, a colleague had to deal with Jacob Rees Mogg for 2 whole years.
I don't completely disagree with you on service, but if we look at healthcare as an example, we do pretty well. It's far from perfect, but look up what an ambulance costs in the USA and the equivalent cost in the UK. It's not a case of being milked by the political class - with exceptions - Jacob Rees Mogg, Nigel Farage...