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Actually, me and a team of two other developers recently applied for a government contract for the NIST that would have had us fixing a bug in OpenSceneGraph th

Actually, me and a team of two other developers recently applied for a government contract for the NIST that would have had us fixing a bug in OpenSceneGraph that was causing it to perform worse when more graphics cards were added. Due to what they were asking for and the amount of time we thought it would take to accomplish it and provide the documentation they were asking for, we bid in at $60,000. We did not get the bid. I believe it was given to a university in Florida (damn grad students!) for a bid of $42,000. In regards to the Android app in question, I think they just didn't have enough bidders. It's also possible they bogged them down in paperwork and status reports / updates (tends to happen with government contracts) which drove up the cost. I am a bit bothered that the bidding system does not favor companies based in the US that are not owned by foreign companies.

gte910h 15y ago
>and provide the documentation they were asking for, People who've never worked on government contracts cannot conceive of the reporting and documentation projects. I've been on several (govt) projects where we spent as much time writing as doing.
- danso 15y ago
  But what's the quality expectation on the reporting and documentation? Is it likely that your audience (the gov't managers) have lower standards?
  - gte910h 15y ago
    They not only expected very high quality with lots of thoroughness, they also wanted very specific formatting and types of sections, etc. Because they're the government, they often overspecify to not get taken advantage of.