The IRS wastes between $81 million and $114 million a year through inadequate management of server software licenses, an estimate based on amounts spent for licenses and annual license maintenance that were not being used at the time of a compliance review, an IG report has said.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said the numbers could be either higher or lower depending on the extent that the IRS had used the licenses prior to the compliance review. “However, the IRS does not know if the software licenses were ever used,” it said.
“The IRS does not effectively manage server software licenses and is not adhering to federal requirements and industry best practices. The IRS does not have enterprise-wide or local policies, procedures, and requirements for managing server software licenses and does not have a centralized, enterprise-wide organizational structure for managing server software licenses,” the report said.
In particular, it said, the IRS does not have an enterprise-wide inventory of license purchase and deployment data on server-based software, nor does it have any specialized software license management tools for developing and maintaining such an enterprise-wide inventory.
IRS management in response pointed to its creation of an Enterprise software governance board along with a working group, focusing on developing a standardized process for ensuring consistency in asset management and other software management actions.
The report is here: http://www.treas.gov/tigta/auditreports/2014reports/201420042fr.html
