House passes agency software licensing bill

The House passed a bipartisan proposal with new transparency requirements for government software spending on Wednesday. 

Dubbed the Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets — or SAMOSA — Act, the bill would require agencies to complete a comprehensive assessment of their software and make a plan to consolidate their software licenses and adopt enterprise licenses. It’s backed by Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., and 20 cosponsors. 

That inventory would include things like agency software licenses by vendor, cost and volume, as well as provisions in software licenses that restrict how the agency can use the technology.

The hope is that more information would help agencies save money and reduce duplicative purchases. 

This isn’t a new idea — the government has been trying for years to slash the costs of software licenses, but agencies generally don’t have good information about what software products are most widely used and which ones cost the most, a report by the Government Accountability Office found earlier this year. 

Agencies also aren’t necessarily checking that they’re not buying too many or too few licenses, GAO found. That can be difficult to do without good information about the licenses an agency has and their use. 

NASA alone spent about $15 million on unused software licenses over the past five years, according to a 2023 watchdog report. 

“Without in-depth assessments of how agencies buy and use software, vendors often have the upper hand in transactions with federal agencies,” Cartwright said in a statement last year when he introduced the bill. 

The Office of Management and Budget would also be required to give Congress a strategy on supporting governmentwide enterprise licenses, places to leverage government procurement policies to increase the interoperability of software entitlements, directions for agencies to use open-source software and more.

A Congressional Budget Office cost estimate for the proposal found that the bill “could affect direct spending by some agencies” but that “any net changes in direct spending would be negligible.” CBO also noted that a 2022 memo from the Office of Management and Budget already requires agencies to create software inventories. 

GAO has said that, if implemented, the bill could help agencies identify what specific software license products are widely used and cost the most across the government.

SAMOSA is a followup to a 2016 law called the Megabyte Act, also focused on software inventories.

As for its prospects, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced the proposal in July. A similar proposal also advanced out of the Senate committee during the last Congress, although passing either chamber is a new milestone for the bill.

And the issue of government software spending may receive additional scrutiny under the incoming Trump administration. 

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, launched a DOGE caucus last week meant to collaborate with the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory effort – not a government department – for the incoming Trump administration being run by billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

Ernst sent a letter to the pair last week with her ideas for cost cutting. Among them: consolidating cloud computing software licenses. 

She pointed to a 2023 study on vendor lock-in by procurement expert Michael Garland for trade group NetChoice, which has backed SAMOSA, as have some other IT trade groups. 

Ten vendors account for about 73% of the most used licenses among the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies, GAO found in its report earlier this year.

Garland, who recommended SAMOSA to help with vendor lock-in in his report, estimated that the government could save up to $750 million annually with a 5% improvement in price performance via competition.

“The government should decisively attempt to maintain the ability to substitute one product for another, whenever it is economically or technically expedient to do so,” he wrote.

The Biden White House has also done some work on software licensing through the General Services Administration through its Better Contracting Initiative. Last year, it announced that GSA would work out a governmentwide licensing agreement with an unnamed vendor to capture efficiencies across agencies.