Agencies can occasionally secure bulk or government-specific discounts, making it more cost-effective for them to purchase software licenses on behalf of their private contractors. “It’s a clear strategy for agencies to keep expenses in check,” noted a former official.
Each government agency has a distinct organizational structure, encompassing numerous subagencies or units, each with its own software requirements. This situation may help clarify some of the other reported licensing issues that DOGE highlighted this week, such as the GSA operating “three different ticketing systems simultaneously” and employing various tools for unspecified training purposes.
In another post this week, DOGE criticized the Department of Labor for allegedly licensing five cybersecurity programs, each intended for over 20,000 users, despite the department’s employee count being around 15,000. The post also mentioned that the department possesses 380 Microsoft 365 productivity software licenses with no active users, activating only 30 out of the 128 Microsoft Teams conference rooms it licensed, and utilizing merely 22 out of 129 Photoshop licenses. Additionally, the post referenced unused licenses for “VSCode,” the abbreviated name for a free Microsoft tool for coding, as well as an alternative paid product called Visual Studio.
Microsoft declined to provide comments. Adobe, the developer of Photoshop, did not respond to a request for a statement.
Although DOGE may not have painted a complete picture of extravagant expenditure, it is indeed true that the federal government at times has struggled to manage its software license utilization effectively. Various watchdog organizations within the government have previously identified cases of wasteful software expenditures.
For years, members of Congress have been urging agencies to tackle this issue, according to the former federal official. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets Act, or SAMOSA Act, which saw bipartisan approval in the House last year but stalled in the Senate, aimed to compel agencies to undertake assessments of their existing software contracts, consolidate licenses where feasible, and negotiate better deals to reduce costs. The legislation intended to enhance agencies’ bargaining capabilities against the few dominant tech firms in the government software contracting sector, as highlighted by the former official.
“If Elon [Musk] wanted to approach this correctly, he would collaborate with Congress to pass the SAMOSA Act,” the official stated. “This would enable individuals who remain even after DOGE departs to forge smarter, more economical contracts. They should be establishing a systematic process where agencies routinely reassess their software requirements and achieve better performance at lower costs.”
Triplette, from the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, commended DOGE for addressing licensing challenges. “While there is much apprehension regarding DOGE’s approach, this is one domain where optimism and potential exist,” she remarked.
Other federal contracting experts and congressional offices have conveyed to WIRED that DOGE should not lose focus on larger targets while searching for cost savings. There were 11 federal IT contracting programs, each costing over $1 billion in the previous fiscal year, which lasted from October 2023 through September 2024, according to an analysis for WIRED by Deltek, whose GovWin IQ tool monitors procurement. Contracts are frequently divided into smaller segments, and across these task orders, more than $1 billion has been disbursed on six specific IT-related task orders in recent years, spearheaded by a Dell contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs and a Booz Allen Hamilton agreement with the Pentagon.
