Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
VA outlines plan to centralize software license tracking after GAO flagged gaps
Summary
In a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing, VA officials and GAO described long-standing gaps in the Department of Veterans Affairs' software license inventory and outlined steps for a centralized Software Asset Management program intended to reduce waste and improve oversight.
Chairman Barrett opened a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing saying the Department of Veterans Affairs spends “over a billion dollars on software licenses every year” and must improve how it tracks and uses those licenses.
The hearing focused on a Government Accountability Office report that found VA did not fully track software licenses in use or compare usage to purchase records. That gap leaves the department unable to identify duplicate or unused licenses, GAO said.
The lack of a complete inventory has programmatic consequences, committee members said. “Without good data, the VA has no way of knowing how much money they're wasting on duplicative or unnecessary licenses,” Barrett said. Carol Harris, Director of Information Technology and Cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office, told the subcommittee that GAO’s January 2024 work found VA “did not track software licenses currently in use, nor did it regularly compare the inventories of those…
Already have an account? Log in
Subscribe to keep reading
Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.
- Unlimited articles
- AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
- Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
- Follow topics and more locations
- 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
