Commentary: Agencies Spend Billions On IT, But Many Can't Track Their Software

Anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent of the federal government's software expenditures could be eliminated through better software asset management. The legislation I introduced in the House to rein in software spending at the Homeland Security Department is as good a place as any to start eliminating that waste.

On Oct. 13, 2011, the Homeland Security Committee passed my amendment to the House version of the DHS authorization bill that would eliminate wasteful software license spending. The legislation would require DHS' chief information officer to:

• Conduct a departmentwide inventory of existing software licenses, including those that aren't in use.
• Assess the department's needs for software licenses during the next two fiscal years.
• Examine how DHS can achieve the greatest possible economies of scale and cost-savings in the procurement of software licenses.

This bill brings into clear focus something that private enterprises have struggled with for years. The complexity surrounding enterprise software licenses is mind-boggling, making it difficult for agencies to understand how much software they need, how much software they have and how much software they're actually using. This produces two wasteful consequences: endemic over purchasing of certain software packages and endemic under purchasing of others...