Agency software purchasing bill passes House
Legislation to improve federal agency oversight and management of software purchases passed the House on Wednesday, keeping top IT and software trade groups’ hopes alive that the bill will get through the Senate and become law before this congressional term is up.
The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets Act (H.R.1695) was introduced by Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., last year and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 20 House lawmakers.
Calling the rooting out of waste, fraud and abuse a “signal mission” of the House Oversight Committee, Cartwight said the bill would ensure that federal agencies are required to conduct a “comprehensive assessment of their current software assets and restructure their operations to reduce unnecessary costs.”
“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, simply unnecessary,” he said. “This commonsense bill will reduce waste, strengthen cybersecurity and modernize government operations.”
The SAMOSA Act, the successor to Cartwright’s 2016 MEGABYTE Act, would charge agency chief information officers with conducting software assessments and submitting those findings to the General Services Administration, the Office of Management and Budget and the Government Accountability Office, which has shown particular interest on the topic of duplicative licenses. From there, plans would be developed to better manage the procurement of software and eliminate deficiencies and other bad acquisition practices.
The legislation is backed by the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, the Alliance for Digital Innovation, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, NetChoice and the Software Information & Industry Association, all of which signed a letter in August urging Senate and House leadership to pass the SAMOSA Act before the end of the year.
Ryan Triplette, executive director of the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, told FedScoop at the time that the SAMOSA Act should be a no-brainer for passage by lawmakers given its focus on “good governance” and “best practices” for software licensing purchases.
Passing the legislation is important “given the amount of dollars that are at stake, but also … [the] security implications and just pure efficiencies and resiliency of operations,” Triplette said. “We depend on our cloud operations, we depend on our daily technology to function every day, and this is getting at it.”
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday spoke to the bill’s good governance bona fides, saying it would “reduce wasteful spending and improve government efficiency.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., meanwhile, noted that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee estimated that the legislation could save taxpayers up to $5 billion a year. “This bipartisan legislation will enable the federal government to operate more effectively, more efficiently and more transparently,” he added.
With the clock ticking on the 118th Congress, all eyes now turn to the Senate, where the bill passed through the Homeland Security Committee last year but has been idle since. Cartwright in his floor remarks thanked Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., for leading the measure in the upper chamber.
“I urge my colleagues to vote ‘yes’ and encourage swift passage of SAMOSA through the Senate,” he said.
