A study by the Government Accountability Office found inconsistencies and insufficient data on software purchases made by 24 federal agencies, causing gaps in software license inventory.
The GAO report that was released on Monday highlighted that the highest payment amounts for software cannot be identified and may be costing the government more money due to inefficiency.
The government watchdog interviewed 24 chief financial officers from federal agencies including the Departments of Agriculture, Energy and Housing and Urban Development. They reported Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle and ServiceNow as the highest-paid vendors for fiscal year 2021.
However, GAO could not determine which of the companies’ licensed products were most widely used because the government respondents did not have a standardized system for tracking the number of required licenses for each of the products.
GAO recommended that the agencies compare their inventory of purchased licenses with that of currently used licenses to avoid unnecessary costs for the government, which invests more than $100 billion in software and other IT and cyber-related products.