According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an audit revealed that thousands of software licenses were unused and a waste of money.
DOGE posted on X that there are “11,020 Acrobat licences without any users”.
There are also other examples included in the list.
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.”
The tweet ended with “All is being fixed.”
There are a lot of software licenses that have not been used in the federal government. You are wasting your tax dollars,” Elon Musk commented on the DOGE posting.
DOGE made previous announcements similar to this one regarding the General Services Administration (GSA), Department of Labor (DOL), Small Business Administration, and Social Security Administration.
“Agencies often have more software licenses than employees, and the licenses are often idle (i.e., paid for, but not installed on any computer),” the DOGE X account noted in a tweet.
The post stated, “For instance, GSA has 13,000 employees and 37,000 WinZip licenses, 19,000 training software subscriptions (including multiple training platforms running simultaneously), 7,500 seats of project management software for a division consisting of 5,500 people, and 3 ticketing systems operating in parallel.”
In the tweet, it was noted that “Fixes are actively in work.”
DOGE GSA X quickly responded, indicating cuts would be coming:
“Not for long …” read a tweet. A scissor emoji was added to the message as an indication that there would be cuts. We will update you on our progress in a few days!
Stephen Ehikian, GSA’s Acting Administrator/Deputy Administrator, replied: “We hope we did not make you wait for too long… Within 3 hours after @DOGE posted, @USGSA took immediate action to cut $5.5M in IT spending & is working to find additional savings across all categories – ensuring strong stewardship of your tax dollars.”
A few days later, another DOGE report reported that GSA had made important progress.
DOGE reported, “Since the publication of this article, @USGSA has taken immediate action to cut IT spending by eliminating 114,163 unutilized software licenses and 15 redundant or underutilized software products, resulting in a $9.6M annual saving.”
In a Fox News Digital statement, a GSA spokesperson stated, “To support the administration’s priority, efficiency, and good stewardship, GSA is currently undertaking an audit of its contracts and IT resources to ensure that our staff can fulfill their mission to support American taxpayers.” GSA took immediate steps to fully implement current executive orders, and it is dedicated to taking quick action for any new executive order.
