Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARTWRIGHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4904, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let me first begin by thanking our chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jason Chaffetz, for bringing this bill forward for a vote. I also want to thank the gentleman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings, my friend and the ranking member; as well as the other two lead cosponsors who are here, Congressman Will Hurd of Texas and Congressman Steve Russell of Oklahoma who just spoke for their support.

Additionally, I also want to join him in thanking Senator Bill Cassidy--lately our colleague here in the House, but now over in the minor leagues--for his support and his authorship of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, we are always looking for ways to curb waste in the Federal Government, and sometimes it is surprising the places you find it. It is a changing world. Fifty years ago, nobody used the acronym IT, but now they do, and there is waste to be found in the IT procurement mechanism.

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government spends $82 billion a year on information technology. Right now, for the second year in a row, our GAO has identified IT software license management as a top priority in its annual duplication report. A duplication report is something that is really good at identifying waste because duplication means what it says: you are duplicating purchases in the Federal Government.

Of the 24 major Federal agencies, as you just heard, only two have implemented policies of comprehensive and clear management of software licenses. It is like this: anybody in the private sector knows that when you go to buy a suite of software from a major vendor, they sell it in blocks with a price point. So you might buy a block of 25 copies of a particular brand of software even though your office only needs 19 copies. That means you have six extra licenses left over.

The Federal Government buys software the same way. What we found is they are not doing a good enough job of keeping track of the unused licenses. This bill codifies current administration efforts to do things like that to save the Federal taxpayers their tax dollars.

Right now none of the 24 agencies have fully implemented all of these industry best practices recommended by the GAO, and that ends now with this legislation.

The Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies Act, the MEGABYTE Act, is comprised of necessary reforms to the Federal Government's management of IT software licenses. In particular, the MEGABYTE Act achieves cost savings by seven action items:

Number one, it requires the Office of Management and Budget to issue directives requiring agencies to identify clear roles, responsibilities, and central oversight authority for managing IT software licenses;

Number two, it requires having agencies establish comprehensive records of software license spending and inventories of enterprise licenses in the agency, as I just mentioned;

Number three, regularly track and efficiently and effectively utilize software licenses to assist the executive agency in implementing decisions throughout the software license management life cycle;

Number four, analyze software usage and other data to make cost- effective decisions in the purchase of software;

Number five, provide relevant training for software license management;

Number six, establish broad objectives and targeted implementation strategies of the software license management program of the agency;

And, finally, number seven, consider the software license management life cycle phases, including the requisition, reception, deployment and maintenance, retirement, and disposal phases in order to implement effective decisionmaking, again, in the purchase and handling of software.

The GAO found that when implementing these oversight and management practices reflected in the MEGABYTE Act, a Federal agency--one Federal agency--saved 181 million tax dollars in a single year. Enacting MEGABYTE across the entire executive branch promises potentially yielding billions of savings to the American taxpayer footing the bill for all of this.

Mr. Speaker, improving the management of agency contracts and licensing for commercial software is critical to ensuring the procurement process works effectively for both the Federal Government and industry that provides the software.

An obvious example of how effective software management could save not only dollars and cents, but improve the lives of Americans is in the health records of our servicemembers.

Mr. Speaker, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee has held hearings on the failure by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement a fully integrated electronic health record system for our Active Duty soldiers and our veterans. As early as 1998, DOD and VA began an effort to create health records that could work together, with an initiative to create a joint system--an integrated electronic health record system. But after nearly two decades and spending over $560 million toward that effort, DOD and VA ditched the plan and continued on with their separate systems.

Now, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who are making their transition from DOD to VA health care are told to print out hard copies of their medical records and bring them to the VA. That is an enormous sum of money to have spent with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Mr. Speaker, it is my hope that the MEGABYTE Act is the first in a series of steps we can take to minimize wasteful software spending and to promote efficient procurement of technology. Our software and technology must promote interoperability across multiple platforms--and this starts with effective decisionmaking. By encouraging the use of open standards that are technology neutral, we can encourage innovation when we create connected, interoperable components and systems, driving down costs and avoiding unnecessary lock-in to any one particular technology platform.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the bipartisan and bicameral effort behind this bill. I thank, again, our chairman, Jason Chaffetz, for advancing the bill.

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Mr. CARTWRIGHT.

I urge my fellow Members of the United States House of Representatives to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 4904, a commonsense, bipartisan, bicameral effort to save the American taxpayers money in the purchase of software. It is our chance to nip this problem in the bud before it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It is an opportunity to save a whopping amount of money for the American taxpayer.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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