This actually is pretty cool. It's a rather low cost way to get functioning systems for the government. They are emulating the VC's approach to get products o

This actually is pretty cool. It's a rather low cost way to get functioning systems for the government. They are emulating the VC's approach to get products off the ground, minus the upfront funding. The lack of upfront funding might discourage a lot of potential entries. It might be better to run this as an iterative process. A minimum qualifying round to narrow the field of candidates. Then lightly fund the resulting teams in the next round. Evaluation at another checkpoint weeds out the non-performing teams. And fully fund the last couple entries. Then select the winning entry at the end, and award the long term contract to the winning entry. This way would be fairer to all parties involved.