Government ministries owe about US$3 million in outstanding license fees for using services from providers such as Microsoft.
This was confirmed by Dr Rupert Griffith, Ministry of Science, Technology and Sports who said the providers called on Government to be more compliant.
Griffith said the amount owed originally was $23 million but was reduced after negotiations with the service providers.
"It is not a question of penalties, it is a question of compliance," he explained.
"Over the last nine months the non-compliance was looked at. We entered into a negotiation with all of the providers, when we saw the $23 million. We negotiated the price and they were very kind to bring it down to about US$3 million.
"It is not a question of penalties."
Griffith said Microsoft stumbled upon the non-compliance during a survey and brought it to the attention of the ministry.
"We did our own survey through iGovtt and the Ministry of Science and Technology and we realised there was a lot of non-compliance in the use of some of the licenses," he said.
