Posted on 03/13/2025 7:08:36 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been squandering money on thousands of unused software licenses, an audit found, according to DOGE.
For example, there were "11,020 Acrobat licenses with zero users," DOGE noted in the post on X.
The list also included other examples.
DOGE's "initial findings on paid software licenses" also included, "35,855 ServiceNow licenses on three products; only using 84," "1,776 Cognos licenses; only using 325," "800 WestLaw Classic licenses; only using 216" and "10,000 Java licenses; only using 400."
"All are being fixed," the tweet concluded.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
This is great news.
It makes you wonder what the Inspector Generals have been doing all these years.
Software licenses are low hanging fruit in most organizations. That’s because it is a bitch to get sued so better safe than sorry.
You don’t need a license to use Java.
Congress is resisting cutting the budget means less take home pay.
usually a spending budget is on a “do not exceed” basis. Does a federal “budget” require that every penny gets spent, or are they supposed to be “do not exceed”?
average cost for the basic version is about $15 a month per license. This comes to almost $2,000,000 per year, for one department.
It’s massive fraud. The feds need to track the money and start arresting violators.
Traditionally every federal department wanted to spend every penny to assure they supported their budget request for the following year.
If the money was not authorized by Congress they are banned from exceeding it.
This is what happens when government gets big, it is directly related to declining accountability. You would expect the opposite, but in reality this is the inverse relationship we have.
Its not fraud. Its incompetence. No one is accountable for anything. They buy these products, no one uses them, and the payments just get renewed year after year. “Fraud” would imply someone in the government benefits. They don’t. Its big tech that is benefitting.
“And Congress is resisting cutting the budget by a fricken nickel by passing a continuing resolution to just use last year’s budget, which, with the exception of a few hundred billion added on is the same wasteful budget as the last several years.”
But wait! They have an “R” behind their names! Completely acceptable! This means they are playing 4D chess by spending even more money to claim saving money!
It is the genius of their crafty plan!
High turnover doesn't help.
HUD might be the worst agency due to their staff and systems.
For-profit companies rarely ever buy general software licenses in ones and twos. They buy what are called “site licenses” at a negotiated price for a large department, division, or the entire company.
If the federal government is buying individual user licenses for major software, they are far more stupid than I thought.
If I needed to buy a specialized software package, I would get an individual user license, but I would have to justify it every year. It was not automatically renewed by the contracts department.
Of course, applying private sector efficiency and cost control concepts to the federal government is a silly thing to do.
I keep expecting Java to be more integrated into PLSQL. LOL
Yes, the “spend it or lose it next year” mentality is rife throughout the government. That is why they shovel out huge amounts of money in August and September (fiscal year starts Oct 1). It is the ultimate perverse incentive. They are incented to spend spend spend. In the private sector, you are a hero and get rewarded if you DO NOT spend all of your budget.
Fixing that perverse incentive in the federal government would be a huge win for President Trump and DOGE.
This happens when you have a workforce that thinks the money flow is never-ending, if they think about it at all.
Sounds like somebody needs that subscription app as seen on TV.
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