The General Services Administration, Office of Management and Budget and Defense Department have begun to co-host information sharing and collaboration sessions to provide software category management assistance to agency software license managers.
Mary Davie, assistant commissioner of the integrated technology service office at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, wrote in a blog entry posted Wednesday the Enterprise Software Category Team — comprised of GSA, OMB and DoD-Enterprise Software Initiative — supports agencies’ efforts to implement the Making Electronic Government Accountable by Yielding Tangible Efficiencies Act.
She said the MEGABYTE Act directs agency chief information officers to manage their information technology infrastructure and conduct software category management in efforts to achieve savings that can be re-invested in IT modernization projects.
GSA’s IT Software Category team works with industry and government professionals in enterprise software licensing, software asset management, strategic sourcing and category management to help agencies meet MEGABYTE requirements, according to Davie.
She added ESCT hosts meetings where software license managers from 24 Chief Financial Officer Council agencies discuss progress in savings; software centralization; strategic vendor management; and software inventory data collection.
The team has facilitated nine sessions with representatives from 28 separate agencies which led to the creation of tools and templates designed to aid vendor management planning, software centralization, cost savings analysis and automated software asset management, Davie wrote.
