In my (limited) experience, that fear is unfounded. I work with about a dozen local government entities and every last one of them reaches out to consultants w

In my (limited) experience, that fear is unfounded. I work with about a dozen local government entities and every last one of them reaches out to consultants when making architecture decisions. I've never once run across one that pulls the "it has to be this way because we say so" in the tech realm. They'll absolutely provide requirements, but they won't dictate how those requirements are met. I guess I would be shocked to find out there is any significant number of local governments out there that demand to dictate architecture of something they have no expertise in. If ANYTHING, the times I see them get out over their ski's is when they trust a vendor consultant TOO much. See: every Oracle implementation ever.