Over the last 11 months, the General Services Administration has signed 11 enterprisewide software agreements under its OneGov strategy.

The agreements bring both standard terms and conditions as well as significant discounts for a limited period of time to agencies.

Ryan Triplette, the executive director of the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, said the Trump administration seems to be taking cues from what has been working, or not working, in the private sector around managing software licenses.

“They seem to be saying, ‘let’s see if we can import that in to the federal agencies,’ and ‘let’s see if we can address that to mitigate some of the issues that have been occurring in some of the systemic problems that have been occurring here,’” said Triplette on Ask the CIO. “Now it’s significant, and it’s a challenge, but it’s something that we think is important that you understand any precedent that is set in one place, in this instance, in the public agencies, will have a ripple of impact over into the commercial sector.”

The coalition, which cloud service providers created in 2022 to advocate for less-restrictive rules for buying software, outlined nine principles that it would like to see applied to all software licenses, including terms should be clear and intelligible, customers should be free to run their on-premise software on the cloud of their choice and licenses should cover reasonably expected software uses.

Triplette said while there still is a lot to understand about these new OneGov agreements, GSA seems to recognize there is an opportunity to address some long standing challenges with how the government buys and manages its software.

“You had the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts and you had the federal chief information officer calling for an assessment of the top five software vendors from all the federal agencies. And you also have the executive order that established OneGov and having them seeking to establish these enterprisewide licensees, I think they recognize that there’s an opportunity here to effect change and to borrow practices from what they have seen has worked in the commercial sector,” she said. “Now there’s so many moving parts of issues that need to be addressed within the federal government’s IT and systems, generally. But just tackling issues that we have seen within software and just tackling the recommendations that have been made by the Government Accountability Office over the past several years is important.”

Building on the success of the MEGABYTE Act

GAO has highlighted concerns about vendors applying restrictive licensing practices. In November 2024, GAO found vendor processes that limit, impede or prevent agencies’ efforts to use software in cloud computing. Meanwhile of the six agencies auditors analyzed, none had “fully established guidance that specifically addressed the two key industry activities for effectively managing the risk of impacts of restrictive practices.”

Triplette said the data call by the federal CIO in April and the OneGov efforts are solid initial steps to change how agencies buy and manage software.

The Office of Management and Budget and GSA have tried several times over the past two decades to improve the management of software. Congress also joined the effort passing the Making Electronic Government (MEGABYTE) Act in 2016.

Triplette said despite these efforts the lack of data has been a constant problem.

“The federal government has found that even when there’s a modicum of understanding of what their software asset management uses, they seem to find a cost performance improvement within the departments. So that’s been one issue. You have the differing needs of the various agencies and departments. This has led them in previous efforts to either opt out of enterprisewide licenses or to modify them with their own terms. So even when there’s been these efforts, you find, like, a year or two or three years later, it’s all a wash,” she said. “Quite frankly, you have a lack of a central mandate and appropriations line. That’s probably the most fundamental thing and why it also differs so fundamentally from other governments that have some of these more centralized services. For instance, the UK government has a central mandate, it works quite well.”

Triplette said what has changed is what she called a “sheer force of will” by OMB and GSA.

“They are recognizing the significant amount of waste that’s been occurring and that there has been lock-in with some software vendors and other issues that need to be tackled,” she said. “I think you’ve seen where the administration has really leaned into that. Now, what is going to be interesting is because it has been so centralized, like the OneGov effort, it’s still also an opt-in process. So that’s why I keep on saying, it’ll to be determined how effective it will be.”

SAMOSA gaining momentum

In addition to the administration’s efforts, Triplette said she’s hopeful Congress finally passes the Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act. The Senate ran out of time to act on SAMOSA last session, after the House passed it in December.

The latest version of SAMOSA mirrors the Senate bill the committee passed in May 2023. It also is similar to the House version introduced in March by Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), the late Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), and several other lawmakers.

The coalition is a strong supporter of SAMOSA.

Triplette said one of the most important provisions in the bill would require agencies to have a dedicated executive overseeing software license asset management.

“There is an importance and a need to have greater expertise within the federal workforce, around software licensing, and especially arguably, vendor-specific software licensing terms,” she said. “I think this is one area that the administration could take a cue from the commercial sector. When they’re engaged in commercial licensing, they tend to work with consultants that are experts in the vendor licensing rules, they understand the policy and they understand the ins and outs. They often have somebody in house that … may not be solely specific to one vendor, but they may do only two or three and so you really have that depth of expertise, that you can understand some great cost savings.”

Triplette added that while finding these types of experts isn’t easy, the return on the investment of either hiring or training someone is well worth it.

She said some estimate that the government could save $50 million a year by improving how it manages its software licenses.  This is on top of what the MEGABYTE Act already produced. In 2020, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that 13 agencies saved or avoided spending more than $450 million between fiscal 2017 and 2019 because of the MEGABYTE Act.

“The MEGABYTE Act was an excellent first step, but this, like everything, [is] part of an iterative process. I think it’s something that needs to have the requirement that it has to be done and mandated,” Triplette said. “This is something that has become new as you’ve had the full federal movement to the cloud, and the discussion of licensing terms between on-premise and the cloud, and the intersection between all of this transformation. That is something that wasn’t around during the MEGABYTE Act. I think that’s where it’s a little bit of a different situation.”

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