This is a frustrating thing as a software developer: not enough people outside the industry know how to audit what they're buying. The expectation is that you

This is a frustrating thing as a software developer: not enough people outside the industry know how to audit what they're buying. The expectation is that you reward a developer for simply implementing X, and no attention is given to whether or not the implementation sucks. A lack of open-source mandates may be one factor, and a lack of quality regulation may be another. It is entirely possible to implement a "working" system that will require Herculean efforts to make the slightest change: a system that will collapse in on itself entirely if anything is touched anywhere else. And if you already spent a lot of money to get this far, you may assume a lot more is required to patch it. Sadly, although we as an industry do know how to build hardened systems that are a lot more likely to adapt with the times and provide stable operation, people outside of the software industry really don't seem to know the difference. And if better software comes at a premium up front, cheap organizations may always pick the lower bid because they're thinking of software like an office chair and not a bridge that's holding up a road.