Absolutely. I could imagine a system where the job goes to the lowest price * reputation, with lower (which in this case means better) reputation causing you to

Absolutely. I could imagine a system where the job goes to the lowest price * reputation, with lower (which in this case means better) reputation causing you to win the bid even if other companies bid lower. Assigning reputation in a system with financial incentives is a challenge in itself too. If reputation is decided in a non-transparent process, such as members of 18F deciding, the system is ripe for bias, e.g. towards companies with ex-collegues, friends or aquaintances. Any public form of online voting is subject to manipulation, closed voting of the companies involved would leat to a conflict of interest as companies have no incentive to distribute reputation fairly, and raising and lowering reputation depending on if the job was done or not allows companies to do the contract with the lowest effort possible, leading to the problem the above poster described.