Federal obligations in software publishers (NAICS 511210)

Publisher products versus custom code

NAICS 511210 covers establishments that publish software: designing, producing, and distributing packaged software. On USAspending.gov the code tags contract awards classified as that publisher industry—enterprise licenses, commercial software buys, and related publisher contracts. It is not a seat count, and it is not every line of code a contractor writes for an agency.

Custom computer programming (541511) writes software to a client specification. Systems design (541512) plans and integrates systems. Other computer related services (541519) is the residual IT-services bucket. A modernization program can buy licenses under 511210 and labor under 541511. The $20.9 billion figure is only awards tagged 511210.

Reading $20.9 billion in publisher obligations

USAspending records obligations on contract awards tagged 511210. License orders, enterprise agreements, and modifications all feed $20,934,340,485.03. This packet has no fiscal-year split and no outlay total. Multi-year software agreements can show a large obligation while invoices follow the license term.

Outlays are the payments. Quote $20.9 billion as USAspending contract obligations coded to software publishers. Do not describe it as all federal software spending or as cash already spent.

13,339 awards on a publisher code

The 13,339 award records include many discrete license orders as well as larger enterprise vehicles. The count is not 13,339 software titles. Compared with residual other-computer-services, publishers show fewer records in this industry set. Open the industry page for the award list.

License contracting has a vocabulary—seats, enterprise agreements, true-ups—that this packet does not contain. What it contains is $20,934,340,485.03 in USAspending obligations on 13,339 awards tagged NAICS 511210. That is enough to say the government buys packaged software as a publisher industry, and not enough to say how many copies sit on federal machines. Custom code stays on 541511 when tagged that way. A program that buys both a commercial product and a contractor to configure it can appear on two industry pages. This guide reports only the publisher page. Keep 13,339 attached to the dollars so the total is not mistaken for a handful of perpetual licenses. Keep outlays out; invoices can trail the recorded commitment. Keep grants out when they lack NAICS.

What 511210 excludes

Assistance awards often lack NAICS and are outside this total. Custom development, systems design, facilities management, and other computer services remain on their 5415xx pages. Wired telecom carriers (517110) sell transmission, not packaged software. Those neighboring tables are separate.

SpendingVault aggregates USAspending.gov contract data. The $20,934,340,485.03 total and the 13,339 award count can change after corrections. The live industry page is the table of record.

Using the software-publishers industry page

Open the SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS industry page for the award list under the headline. Place 511210 next to 541511–541513 and 541519 on All industries. Cite obligations, not outlays, and keep the 13,339 award count with the dollar figure.

Citing publisher licenses without custom code

Cite $20,934,340,485.03 in USAspending obligations on 13,339 awards tagged NAICS 511210, software publishers. Say packaged software publishing, not custom programming, not systems design, not facilities management.

The 13,339 award count is license orders and enterprise vehicles, not titles in a catalog. Outlays follow the license term and are not in this packet. Assistance is generally excluded. If a commercial-item software buy was tagged as 541519, it will not sit in this $20.9 billion total.

Software publishers sell packaged products. Custom developers write to spec. The $20,934,340,485.03 total is awards tagged 511210, including the 13,339 license orders and enterprise agreements in this packet. A seat expansion and a new product line can both be rows. Seat counts themselves are not published here.

Cloud operations tagged as facilities management (541513) are not publishers. Residual other computer services (541519) are not publishers. Cite USAspending obligations on 13,339 awards coded 511210, software publishers. Keep outlays out; license invoices can trail the obligation. Keep grants out when they lack NAICS. The industry table shows who the publisher-tagged vendors are.

Questions

How much is obligated on NAICS 511210 software publishers?

USAspending.gov contract awards coded NAICS 511210 show $20,934,340,485.03 in obligations across 13,339 awards. That total is obligations, not outlays, for software publishers. USAspending.gov records the amount as contract obligations, not outlays, on awards tagged NAICS 511210.

Is this the same as custom computer programming?

No. Custom programming is NAICS 541511. Software publishers are 511210. The $20,934,340,485.03 figure does not include awards tagged only as 541511. The packet total is $20,934,340,485.03 across 13,339 awards; assistance awards often have no NAICS and stay outside the industry rollup.

Does 511210 include cloud or data-center operations?

Computer facilities management is NAICS 541513. This table is software publishing. Facilities-management dollars tagged 541513 are outside the $20,934,340,485.03 total. Treat the 13,339 figure as an award-record count, including orders and modifications, not as a physical inventory of products or sites.

Do 13,339 awards mean 13,339 software titles?

No. The 13,339 figure counts contract award records, including license orders and modifications. It is not a catalog of products. This guide does not add a fiscal-year split. Quote the live industry page if you need the current award list under SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS.