Agents sometimes get massive or government discounts, so it may be cheaper to buy a software license on behalf of a personal contractor. “It is a very clear way for the agency to manage the cost,” he says.
All government agencies have their own structures, including many sub -agers or units with their own software demands. This can help to explain the other license issues requested this week, including the GSA’s “three different ticketing systems that are running three different ticketing systems at the same time” and a number of tools for executing unknown education.
~ Inside Separate post This week, Doge called the Ministry of Labor, which is known to license five cyber security programs for more than 20,000 users, despite the fact that there are about 15,000 employees. The post also cited a department with a 380 Microsoft 365 productive software license with zero users and installed only 30 of 128 licensed Microsoft Teams Conference rooms and only 129 of the 129 Photoshop licenses. This post also referred to an unused license for “VSCODE”, a shorthand name of a completely free Microsoft tool for writing code. The company sells paid alternatives known as Visual Studio.
Microsoft refused to comment. Adobe, which develops Photoshop, did not respond to requests.
Doge may not have suggested a full picture of a waste of expenses, but the federal government sometimes struggled to effectively manage the use of software license. many watchdog groups Inside government In the past, we found a waste spending on software.
Congress members have been trying to solve this problem for many years, the former federal officials said. Management and supervision of strengthening agencies of software assets, Or Samosa ActLast year, when he passed the House of Representatives, but stopped at the Senate, the agency would have had to do what Doge was doing. We have a better deal to evaluate the existing software contract and integrate the license and reduce the cost if possible. The law aims to provide more negotiations to agencies for a small number of large companies that dominate government software contracts.
“If it’s Elon [Musk] I wanted to do this in the right way, and they will work with Congress to pass the private law. ” “So even when Dogu leaves, people who are there can sign a smarter and cheaper contract. We need to set up a repeatable process that can continue to re -evaluate the software demands and improve the performance that can be lowered. ”
Triplette of the Fair Software License Union recognized Doge that reviewed the license problem. “I know that there is a lot of concern about what Doge does, but this is one of the areas of hope and possibilities,” she says.
Other federal contractors and parliamentary offices told Wired that Doge should not lose greater goals for saving. According to DELTEK’s Wired Analysis, which tracks the GOVWIN IQ tools, there were 11 federal contract programs for information technology that accounted for more than $ 1 billion in the government’s last fiscal year from October 2023 to September 2024. Contracts are often divided into small pieces, and over the last few years, $ 1 billion has been spent on six individual work orders. They are led by DELL transactions with Veterans Military Booz Allen Hamilton Contract With the Pentagon.
