In my limited experience and anecdata, governments have been so trigger happy in getting rid of and/or marginalizing technical staff that there are few qualifie

In my limited experience and anecdata, governments have been so trigger happy in getting rid of and/or marginalizing technical staff that there are few qualified individuals in the procurement office who can properly draft RFPs and evaluate proposals to keep bidders accountable. What you're left with is mostly (M)BAs and admin types who can hammer out high-level Word docs of specs but not much else. In that environment, it's not surprising that Deloitte, McKessen, IBM and co (or as I like to call them, the Procurement Vampires) can lowball and BS themselves into these projects. If you don't know anything, better the devil you know, right ?