re: Latest from DOGE: Agencies often have more software licenses than employees

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I love the fact that he said this and I find it funny that so many people act like it's some sort of gotcha. I have actually seen him in videos in the past well before he entered the political Arena where he was highly receptive to anybody challenging his ideas regarding a variety of subjects to include engineering on his current Space Program. That's exactly the kind of person I want addressing challenging problems

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I think it was a nice honest moment from Elon. He's posting for headlines and attention. He's not finding all the facts out first. And that's fine ,certainly what one would expect of Twitter posts if you don't take it too seriously. There are many here acting as if his tweets are solid proof of something they aren't...

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I'd just say that maybe we don't take Twitter as gospel. This one was wrong, even if the intent isn't.

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Well I mean no Source should be taken as gospel!

For those singling out WinZip, is it even a subscription based license? Is it possible that the licenses were purchased and are perpetual? I've never paid for a zip type application, always used freeware, so don't know the answer.

I know there are many software platforms that have tiered pricing with add on pricing. At some point the cheaper cost for the next tier is worth over licensing.

My question is, does each department have their own contract, or is there a single US gov contract. Seems like it would be cheaper to have a single contract, but the congressional geniuses probably couldn't figure out how to split it up in the budget.

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Although some of these you have to wonder what the full scope of their planned implementation is and what phase they're in. You sometimes get big price breaks for buying more than you need so you can scale into it. Vs buying small chunks over and over and getting raked over the coals.

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This is part of my wheelhouse, what I do for a living. You don't buy licenses in the range of 2x more than the amount of employees you have. You just don't. At most, if you're doing a conversion of some sort you might have a 10% overage, but then you're going to back that way the frick down once it's done.

Something subscription based like Tableau and you have 2x the seats? frick that. That's so lazy and irresponsible it should be considered criminal. It's not quite as bad as WinZip (I mean, that's FREEWARE and Windows zips and unzips natively), but it's up there.

I'ld love to see how many GIS subs they have vs employees, or how much is still being paid for Exchange licenses for agencies which have already been fully migrated to 365.

Or Creative Cloud. Damn, I bet the money they are wasting on unused Adobe subs (or subs still being used personally by former employees) could match the GDP of a small country.

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You don't buy licenses in the range of 2x more than the amount of employees you have. You just don't. At most, if you're doing a conversion of some sort you might have a 10% overage, but then you're going to back that way the frick down once it's done.

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Oh absolutely but I'd need to see contract terms, understand history, pricing negotiations etc to know how we got here. All this shows is cleanup is needed at this point. I'm curious how we ended up here and was it just waste or was it fraud? I'm guessing waste and laziness or someone being far to optimistic.

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I’m good with any savings.

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Same. I’m just saying that one was nothing to write home about.

I have a 5 device license to my antivirus software because they don't sell a single license for the version I wanted. There's nothing wasteful or nefarious about anything they "found" here.

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Some of you are going to be really disappointed if you ever figure out that "13k GSA employees" doesn't mean "13k people doing work for GSA."
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Shhhh don't add complexities like contractors and vendor licensing. They aren't ready for nuances that might lead to these contracts.

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I'm curious how we ended up here and was it just waste or was it fraud? I'm guessing waste and laziness or someone being far to optimistic.

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Waste is waste. What's good is these things are now are being looked at, people are now talking about it, and what's reasonable and what isn't will get fleshed out. Long overdue IMO.