The Energy Department is poorly managing its computer software licenses, and unnecessarily spending more than it needs to, an internal review found.

The recently released audit (pdf) found that DOE programs and sites routinely paid about $600,000 more than necessary when acquiring software licenses in a three-year period and had not maintained an inventory to manage them.

“We believe that actual unnecessary expenditures and related potential savings may be significantly higher than our calculations demonstrate due to the lack of information available at sites regarding software purchases,” Inspector General Gregory Friedman wrote in a Sept. 30 memo.

The report said the price per license that DOE paid was often more than the governmentwide acquisition contract prices available to all federal agencies. For example, the department paid $250 more for document management software than the price available using a NASA contract vehicle.

Additionally, the IG found at least 52 instances in which pricing for common products such as office automation, document management and engineering software varied widely. And, at Sandia National Laboratories, employees used purchase cards in 11 instances to acquire software licenses at higher prices than those established for the identical product in the lab’s software management system.

SOURCE: fiercegovernmentit.com