SAMOSA Act passes House

Like a driver who’s not paying enough attention, a software bill known as the SAMOSA Act has passed the House.

The delicious-sounding “SAMOSA” stands for “Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets.” If passed, the bill will require each agency’s chief information officer to provide software assessments that include:

• An inventory of “the largest software entitlements of the agency,” separated by provider and category
• Entitlement data, like fees or additional costs for the use of cloud services “not included in the initial costs of the contract agreements or arrangement”
• A list of provisions that restrict software use, like data access and cloud providers

The bill also requires agencies to develop a plan to consolidate licenses and adopt enterprise license agreements to reduce costs.

Expense expanse. Each year, the federal government spends more than $100 billion on IT and cyber-related investments, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO also noted in its January 2024 report that the most widely used and most expensive software used could not be determined across the 24 agencies due to inconsistent, incomplete license data. “For example, multiple software products within license agreements were not separately priced,” the GAO said in its January study offering agency recommendations.

“The US Government is the largest single software customer in the world. Our Federal Government spends billions of taxpayer dollars every year on software licenses alone. Most of these software license purchases are purposeful, but some are redundant, duplicative, and simply unnecessary,” US Representative and bill sponsor Matt Cartwright said, according to the Dec. 4 Congressional record.

The MEGABYTE Act, signed into law in 2016, directed agencies to maintain software-license inventories. SAMOSA builds on the MEGABYTE Act’s success, Cartwright said, by “requiring independent assessment of software license management practices and contracts,” and by pushing the software-tracking CIOs to improve negotiating power with vendors.

“This common sense bill would reduce waste, strengthen cybersecurity, and modernize government operations,” he said.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security said the SAMOSA bill could save taxpayers up to $5 billion a year, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin noted in the Dec. 4 Congressional session.

Us, too. In its 2024 IT asset management report, cloud-management company Flexera found that 41% of 503 global IT professionals surveyed said “wasted SaaS increased over the past year.” Organizations estimated their wasted SaaS spend to be between 20% and 31%.