Buying software is usually done after assessing business or individual needs and either going online or to a store.  The number of licenses is usually determined by how many people live in a household or the number of employees in a business.  But like many other examples of government inefficiency, federal agencies have been buying too many software licenses and often creating their own software programs rather than buying them off-the-shelf.  Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has written often about software asset management and highlighted several examples of federal agencies writing software that duplicates existing private sector programs. 

It was therefore not surprising that on March 6, 2025, Elon Musk and DOGE announced that the federal government has been purchasing too many software licenses and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum to streamline software purchases and buy more off-the-shelf software through a new Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP).

The government has been trying to stop the misuse of software licenses since President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 13103 in 1998, which required agencies to track their software assets.  But software usage remains problematic and wasteful.

A January 29, 2024, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that federal agencies cannot properly account for software license usage leading to either “purchasing too many licenses – referred to as over-purchasing – or purchasing too few licenses that may result in additional fees – referred to as under-purchasing.”  GAO spotlighted how software products that are bundled together under a single license may not have usage data for each product tracked individually and recommended that the agencies improve their tracking of software licenses being used for their widely used licenses and compare software licenses used against those they have purchased to improve software investment decisions and find opportunities to reduce costs.

Continuing review of procurement practices across the federal government is essential for DOGE, agency heads, and Congress.  The elimination of wasteful spending on excessive software license purchases and creating duplicative software programs could provide more funding for modernizing the federal government’s aging IT infrastructure.