Agents may receive bulk or government-specific discounts, so it may be more affordable to purchase software licenses on behalf of private contractors. “This is a very clear way for agents to manage costs,” says Ex-official.
Every government agency has its own unique structure, including many sub-agencies and units, each with its own software needs. This will help explain the suspected issue Doge was called this week, including including the GSA containing “three different ticket systems running in parallel” and multiple tools to perform unspecified training.
In another post this week, Doge called on the Department of Labor, which allegedly licensed five cybersecurity programs for more than 20,000 users, despite only about 15,000 employees. In this post, I have a 380 Microsoft 365 productivity software license with zero users, and I have installed only 30 of the 128 licensed Microsoft Teams Conference Rooms, and only 22 of the 129 Photoshop licenses. This post also referenced an unused license for “VSCODE”, abbreviation for a completely free Microsoft tool for writing code. The company sells a paid alternative known as Visual Studio.
Microsoft declined to comment. Adobe, which develops Photoshop, did not respond to requests for comment.
While Doge may not have been able to present a complete picture of wasteful spending, it is true that the federal government sometimes struggled to effectively manage the use of software licenses. Numerous watchdog groups within the government have discovered cases of wasted spending on software in the past.
Members of Congress have worked for years to acquire an agency that addresses the issue, former federal officials say. The strengthening and surveillance of the Software Assets Act or Samosa Act, which passed the House last year with bipartisan support, but stagnated in the Senate, would have requested that Doge do what he is doing now: evaluate existing software contracts, consolidate licenses whenever possible, and get better deals. The law, according to previous officials, aims to give institutions more negotiation power to the small number of large tech companies that control government software contracts.
“If it's Elon [Musk] We wanted to do this the right way, but they will work with Congress to pass the Samosa Act,” the official said. “So, even when Doge leaves can get into smarter, cheaper contracts, the people there. They need to set up a reproducible process by constantly reassessing their software needs and getting better performance at a lower cost.”
Triplette, a coalition of fair software licenses, praised Doge for investigating licensing issues. “I know there are a lot of concerns about what Doge is doing, but this is one area of hope and potential,” she says.
Other federal contract experts and congressional offices told Wired that Doge should not lose sight of a bigger target while washing for savings. According to an analysis wired to Deltek, which Govwin IQ Tool tracks procurement, last fiscal year of the government, which took place between October 2023 and September 2024, there were 11 federal contract programs each taking into account more than $1 billion in spending. Contracts are often divided into small parts, with over $1 billion spent on six separate task orders related to the past few years. They are led by a Dell agreement with the Veterans Affairs Bureau and a Booze Allen Hamilton agreement with the Pentagon.
