According to a watchdog report, America’s space agency wasted $35 million on fines and penalties because it mismanaged its computer software licenses.
Aren’t these guys the “science” guys who know everything about computers?
The facts came in a new report by the NASA inspector general.
According to Just the News:
The watchdog broke down the $35 million in wasteful spending into $15 million in unused Oracle licenses and $20 million in fines and overpayments.
“The Agency does not have a centralized, authoritative database or inventory that tracks what licenses have been purchased, specific licensing agreements, and whether licenses are available for use by others at the Agency,” Inspector General Paul K. Martin said in the report. “These shortcomings have resulted in NASA spending approximately $15 million over the past 5 years on unused Oracle licenses.”
Adequate software management might have prevented the loss of tens of millions of dollars more, the IG determined.
“Based on the data available, we found that in excess of $20 million has been unnecessarily spent on software fines and penalties over the last 5 years,” reported Martin. “In our judgment, penalty expenditures were potentially avoidable if an enterprise-wide Software Asset Management program had been operational. Therefore, we are questioning the $20 million in penalties.”
The mismanagement of its software packages also leaves the space agency open to hacking and other security threats.
This is government, folks.
It is always incapable to do any job it sets out to do.
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