Uncle Sam's software sprawl: Billions wasted, time to go pro

"Consider the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which recently committed $4.7 billion to Microsoft over five years, probably to repurchase software it has used for decades. This new contract obligates $940 million a year, almost double their previous $1.6 billion, three-year agreement. That's about $27 for every tax-filer in America. It also means the VA's spending on Microsoft has nearly doubled in just three years. Multiply this across many agencies and different vendors and the true cost to taxpayers becomes staggering."

"At the heart of the problem is a "data vacuum." Most agencies simply don't know what software they own, what they use or what they truly need. GAO reports repeatedly confirm this systemic failure: no federal agency can accurately match purchases with deployed software or actual requirements. There are no itemized receipts, no central databases, no unified price benchmarks. This widespread ambiguity allows price disparities, like the $200 per user variation for Microsoft Office 365 between agencies, as recently reported by the Trump administration."

U.S. federal agencies are spending billions on commercial software because procurement is disjointed, opaque, and prone to vendor lock-in. Agencies have longstanding agreements with Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, and ServiceNow that limit competition. The Department of Veterans Affairs committed $4.7 billion to Microsoft over five years, obligating $940 million annually compared with a prior $1.6 billion three-year deal. Most agencies lack accurate software inventories, usage data, or unified price benchmarks, preventing purchase-deployment matching. Price disparities appear across agencies, including roughly $200 per-user differences for Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft’s federal revenue has grown far faster than its overall corporate revenue since 2015.

Read at Nextgov.com