The Office of Management and Budget is trying to bring down the cost of IT in government with a number of new directives, including a category management policy intended to standardize software licensing across federal agencies.

To help agencies get closer toward OMB's goals, the General Services Administration launched a test pilot for a Software License Management as a Service (SLMS) program. The program includes license management apps, governance, policies and training, managed by GSA and offered to agencies for a fee.

"OMB, [the Office of Federal Procurement Policy] and [Government Accountability Office] have released statements and reports in recent months that call on federal agencies to increase their SLM capabilities, highlighting the financial waste and security threats that accompany lack of effective management," Eric Eskam, an IT specialists at GSA's FAS/ITS Office of Strategic Solutions and Security Services, wrote in a blog post announcing the pilot.

"Lack of insight leaves agencies vulnerable to significant overbuying and maintaining expensive and underutilized software assets — often called 'shelfware.'"

Eskam pointed to a report by the GAO showing most agencies don't know what software licenses are currently being managed and deployed across their systems, or even what software is truly needed.

"This prevents an agency from performing a meaningful requirements analysis prior to software purchasing, which in turn can lead to duplicative acquisitions of software when reuse of an already existing asset would have been a better option," he said. "We think Software License Management may be one of the solutions to these issues."

Eskam said conversations with agency CIOs have identified three main challenges, all of which SLMS could help alleviate:

  • CIOs need more visibility into their assets;
  • CIOs are concerned about cyber threat exposure; and
  • CIOs want to modernize their agencies while reducing costs.

Understanding the kinds of software being used and just how pervasive it is can address all these issues. Agency CIOs will have a better picture of the applications being deployed, enabling them to maintain stronger security (through patches or replacing end-of-life software) and bringing down costs by leveraging bulk purchasing and killing maintenance fees on licenses that aren't being used.

The SLMS pilot is currently running at one agency, with the goal of expanding to more departments by fiscal 2017.

Aaron Boyd is an awarding-winning journalist currently serving as editor of Federal Times — a Washington, D.C. institution covering federal workforce and contracting for more than 50 years — and Fifth Domain — a news and information hub focused on cybersecurity and cyberwar from a civilian, military and international perspective.

Share:
In Other News
Load More