OneGov Saves Billions, but Discounts Won’t Last
The federal government is enhancing its buying power to improve purchases of software. On April 29, 2025, the General Services Administration (GSA) launched the OneGov procurement program to negotiate directly with original equipment manufacturers, allowing federal agencies to purchase software licenses as a single customer instead of hundreds of separate ones.
In her April 29, 2026, op-ed in NextGov, GSA Federal Acquisition Service Acting Commissioner Laura Stanton noted that after one year in operation, OneGov, “not only streamlined the buying process but also delivered $1.1 billion in cost savings.” On August 13, 2026, GSA Office of IT Products Director Birgit Smeltzer announced that savings from OneGov had reached $1.62 billion, an increase of 47.3 percent in less than four months.
Software purchases across federal agencies have proven to be a breeding ground for government waste, fraud, and abuse for years. Agencies often purchase more licenses than they need or develop programs that duplicate products already available in the private sector. A January 12, 2023, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of Inspector General report found that the agency had spent approximately $15 million over five years on Oracle licenses it never used. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) built Direct File, a tax-filing tool that duplicated the free filing options private companies already offered through the IRS Free File program. CAGW suggested that Direct File be eliminated. On October 2, 2025, the Department of the Treasury found that Direct File cost $138.27 per return, accounting for less than 0.5 percent of the approximately 146 million returns filed in 2025 and announced that the IRS would end the program.
OneGov has made commercial software cheaper and easier for federal agencies to buy and reduced the time spent reviewing separate purchasing orders for products that other agencies already use by consolidating the purchase process into one entity.
However, despite its success, $1.4 billion, or 86.4 percent of the total of $1.62 billion in OneGov savings, came from limited-time discounts on artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Smeltzer acknowledged that even though the prices agencies pay through OneGov “will eventually increase, the offers have already created significant value for agencies.”
The concentration of savings in AI tools highlights the OneGov’s potential to improve the procurement of many other federal goods and services. GSA should increase the use of OneGov to secure lower prices in the long term to ensure more savings for taxpayers.
by Ritish Kodali
