Yeah, but they don't operate that way, and that's part of the problem. From their point of view, if anything goes wrong with whoever they hire to work on their

Yeah, but they don't operate that way, and that's part of the problem. From their point of view, if anything goes wrong with whoever they hire to work on their infrastructure, they get excoriated by the public. That smart high school kid turns out to be fond of child porn? The department ends up in the state newspaper. So, they publish RFPs and select for established companies. The RFP publishing process isn't that great, so generally speaking there's a subset of companies that monitor for RFPs at various governmental levels, and those companies don't tend to be supplying the most cutting edge technology at the lowest prices. Then, to cover themselves, the departments require a stupid amount of paperwork and a carefully-prepared proposal that's supposed to establish firm costs on vague requirements, like, "cost per computer to provide hardware support for offices in the county". So, the businesses writing the proposals stuff pork all over the place so that they don't end up upside-down on the deal, and besides, they have to pay somebody just to sit and write up reports like these and fill out paperwork and supply background information and client references and attend social mixers and so on and so forth just to get the work in the first place. The entire process is not great, and it's the direct result of everyone just trying to watch out for their own best interests.