January 16, 2023
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) invested a whopping $15 million on Oracle software over the last five years, per an audit report, because it did lack a centralized software asset management practice.
The Office of Inspector General of the aerospace agency published a report that revealed through an observation that NASA’s software asset management (SAM) procedures “currently expose the Agency to operational, financial, and cyber security risks with the management of the software life cycle largely decentralized and ad hoc.”
“NASA purchased large amounts of Oracle products to support Space Shuttle processing and other mission operations during that timeframe containing licensing terms that made transitioning to a competitor difficult due to proprietary technologies,” the OIG wrote in the report.
According to the report, NASA was hesitant to commit to an Oracle audit because it was concerned that the audit’s penalties would cost more than the $15 million.
The report also finds revealed that NASA was still years away from transitioning to an enterprise computing model and was in contravention of federal policy by not establishing a software-based asset management program that tracks inventory and license data. Furthermore, NASA lacks a standard procedure for bargaining with software vendors or dealing with license audits.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.
