GAO: Agencies doing better on software licenses

Federal agencies are making changes to save hundreds of millions of dollars in software licenses, a new watchdog report claimed.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which acts as Congress’s investigative arm, claimed that all 24 of the major federal agencies have adopted some changes to their programs, months after a previous report found they were “not adequately managing” the licenses.

{mosads}“As of August 2014, the majority of agencies that have provided information reported that they plan to address most of the recommendations we made to them,” the GAO said. 

Earlier this year, GAO found that agencies “do not have adequate policies for managing software licenses,” which could be leading to hundreds of millions of lost dollars. To get an idea of the possible money at stake, the Department of Homeland Security previously consolidated its agreements in 2012 and ended up saving about $181 million, the GAO found.

The watchdog office made a total of 136 recommendations earlier in the year. Of those, agencies are planning actions on 129 of them.

All but three of the 24 agencies are planning to adopt the GAO’s full slate of recommendations.

At the Department of Education, for example, a new directive was issued to establish guidelines for buying and managing software, and control of the licenses was centralized. The Small Business Administration is going to create a central hub with documents about its software purchases and will conduct annual reviews of software that is uninstalled or not being used.