> If the government could just negotiate individual salaries for developers, they could pay them twice as much, fire the contractors, and get the work done for

> If the government could just negotiate individual salaries for developers, they could pay them twice as much, fire the contractors, and get the work done for roughly the same quality, and cheaper. This isn't a bug, it's a feature intended to funnel taxpayer money into private companies. And I know this is usually a statement laced with malice, but it's not really - it makes sense (on paper) that if competent private companies exist the government should contract them instead of scaffolding its own development company inside of the existing bureaucracy. In practice we know it would probably be cheaper to just hire 10-ish good developers per county for $1m/yr each and get them to do all the digital work for the state. But that's a harder sell that none of the existing private firms (read: campaign donors who stand to gain no money and lose talented employees) would spring for.