Your first point was excellent, but now you’re trying to prove too much. QA for a software update on those machines is hardly going to justify the cost. But, al

Your first point was excellent, but now you’re trying to prove too much. QA for a software update on those machines is hardly going to justify the cost. But, along with a million other things, I’m sure it was itemized and subitemized, inflated and billed and that’s how we got into this mess. The fact that doing things in government is much more expensive than people think because you have to go through so many hoops and align so many stakeholders is valid. But in this case, they probably still managed to pay 3-5x more than they should have presumably because of basic incompetence and cronyism. Even though the criticism is imprecise (and you’ve legitimately noted why), it’s still about 80% right.