As agents sometimes receive bulk or government-specific discounts, it may also be more affordable to purchase software licenses on behalf of their private contractors. “This is a very clear way for institutions to manage costs,” the former official said.
Each government agency has its own unique structure, including many sub-agents or units, and each component has its own software requirements. This could help explain other alleged licensing issues called this week, including the GSA with “3 different ticketing systems” and a variety of tools for running unspecified training.
In another post this week, Doge called on the Department of Labor to allegedly license five cybersecurity programs, but each has only more than 20,000 users, although only about 15,000 employees. The post also cites the department holding a 380 Microsoft 365 productivity software license, whose users have installed only 30 of the 128 licensed Microsoft Teams meeting rooms and are using only 22 of the 129 Photoshop licenses. The post also cites the unused license of “Vscode”, a shorthand name for a completely free Microsoft tool to write code; the company does sell a paid alternative called Visual Studio.
Microsoft declined to comment. Adobe, which developed Photoshop, did not respond to requests for comment.
While Doge may not demonstrate the full picture of wasted spending, the federal government sometimes strives to effectively manage the use of its software license. Many regulators within the government have found spending wasted on software in the past.
The former federal official said members of Congress have been working to get the agency to solve the problem for years. Strengthening agency management and oversight of the Software Assets Act or the Samosa Act, which passed bipartisan support last year but was struggling in the Senate, would require agencies to do what Doge is doing now: Evaluate existing software contracts, merge licenses, and merge where possible, and get better deals to reduce costs. The legislation aims to give institutions greater bargaining power to a small number of large tech companies that dominate government software contracts.
“If Elon [Musk] To do this the right way, they will work with Congress to pass the Samosa Act. “The official said. “So even Dooge Leaf can sign smarter, cheaper contracts for people. They should set up a repeatable process that will continually reevaluate their software requirements and obtain better performance to increase costs. ”
The Fair Software Licensing Alliance’s Triplette attributes Doge to checking licensing issues. “I know there’s a lot of attention to what Doge does, but it’s an area of hope and possibility,” she said.
Other federal contract experts and the congressional office told Wired that Doge should not ignore larger goals when raising savings. According to Deltek’s Govwin IQ Tracks Procuront’s Deltek, in the last fiscal year, each had 11 federal contract plans for information technology, which spent more than $1 billion. Contracts are often divided into smaller sections, in which six separate task orders have been spent over the past few years on over $1 billion. They were agreed with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Booz Allen Hamilton agreement with the Pentagon.
