In this case, the evidence that this is a hoax makes me feel that the government had no involvement in this. However, for future reference, yes. The government

In this case, the evidence that this is a hoax makes me feel that the government had no involvement in this. However, for future reference, yes. The government would easily contract out something like this. There is a virtually no limit to what the government would contract out. For example, some of my co-workers work on the no-fly-list database/content repository. There's very little that the government does in-house these days.