The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has struggled to track its software inventory, leaving the agency unable to verify if it is purchasing the correct number of licenses for its most widely used tools. A report published last month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights significant management failures regarding the VA’s $985 million annual software expenditure.
While the VA successfully identified its top five software vendors by volume, it lacked the internal mechanisms to compare active usage against purchase records. The GAO concluded that the department currently faces "challenges in determining whether it was purchasing too many or too few of these software licenses."
Licensing gaps and cloud hurdles
The GAO has flagged software license management as a high-risk area for the VA since 2015. Despite previous recommendations to reconcile inventories with purchase contracts, investigators found the department failed to conduct these comparisons on a regular basis.
Beyond simple inventory tracking, the VA is also grappling with "restrictive software licensing practices." The GAO defines these as vendor processes that limit or impede an agency's ability to migrate software to cloud environments. These restrictive terms often inflate costs or force the department into limited selection pools for cloud service providers.
"VA had not established guidance for effectively managing impacts from restrictive practices for cloud computing or determined who is responsible for managing these impacts," the report stated.
In response to the audit, the VA noted that it has taken preliminary steps to improve oversight. The department was scheduled to launch a centralized software license inventory system in late March 2026. The GAO noted that if the system functions as intended, it could serve as a critical first step toward reducing costs associated with duplicate or unnecessary licenses.
However, until that system is fully operational and integrated, the GAO maintains that the VA remains exposed to inefficient spending. The watchdog emphasized that effectively managing these licenses is a matter of "vital importance" to the agency’s fiscal health.
