Since agencies sometimes get wholesale or government discounts, this may be more expensive to buy software licenses on behalf of their own contractors. “It is a very clear way for cost management agencies,” the previous indicator says.
Each government agency has its own unique structure, including many cases or sub -units, and each has its own software needs. This can help explain the other alleged licensing problems that DOGE called this week, including that GSA has “3 different sewers systems that work in parallel” and multiple tools to operate unlimited training.
in Separate This week, Dog called the Ministry of Labor on charges of licensing five cyber security programs, each for more than 20,000 users, although there are only about 15,000 employees. The publication also cited that the section with 380 Microsoft Product Product Licenses 365 with a zero users, as it installed only 30 out of 128 Microsoft Conferences that were licensed, and used 22 out of 129 photoshop licenses. The post also referred to unused licenses for “VsCode”, which is the brief name of the Microsoft tool completely free to write code; The company sells a paid alternative known as Visual Studio.
Microsoft rejected the comment. Adobe, which developed Photoshop, did not respond to a comment.
Although Doge has failed to provide a complete picture of waste spending, the federal government has sometimes struggled to manage the use of program licenses effectively. numerous Observation Collections inside the government I have found cases of steroids on programs in the past.
The former federal official says that for years, members of Congress are trying to obtain agencies to address this issue. The Agency Promotion Act and Supervision of the Law of Software, Or Samosa LawWho passed the House of Representatives last year with the support of the two parties but stopped in the Senate, would have asked the agencies to do what Dog is doing now: evaluating current software contracts, unifying licenses wherever possible, and obtaining better deals to maintain costs. Legislation aims to give agencies more power bargaining on a handful of large technology companies that dominate government software contracting, according to the former official.
“If it is Elon [Musk] They wanted to do this in the right way, they will work with Congress to pass Samosa’s law. ”So people who will be there can even when you can enter Doug papers in more intelligent and lowest decades. They should put a repetitive process as agencies will constantly reassess software needs and get better to reduce costs. “
Triplette, from the coalition for a fair software license, is credited to check licensing problems. “I know that there is a lot of concern about what Dog is doing, but this is one of the areas where there is hope and possibility,” she says.
Federal contracting experts and WIRED offices have told Duj that Dog should not be absent from the greatest goals during exercise for savings. There were 11 federal information technology programs, each of which represents more than a billion dollars in spending during the last fiscal year of the government, which lasted from October 2023 to September 2024, according to the analysis of WireD by Deltek, which tracks the Govwin IQ purchasing tool. Contracts are often divided into smaller parts, and among these tasks orders, more than a billion dollars have been spent on six individual important orders related to them over the past few years. They are led by Dell with the Ministry of Old Warriors Affairs and the Bowoz Allen Hamilton agreement with the Pentagon.