The way government does tech is outdated and risky
Federal Gov employee here.  Can't speak for a project with this scope, but the procurement middlemen get into everything, far for the worse.<p>Two years ago our team wanted to buy a small cluster (~300 cores, ~$50K).  We talked directly to two good vendors (good recommendations from university partners) and came up with a fine machine and 2 bids for it.  Sent recommendations to procurement.<p>Procurement put it out for bid, and a fly-by-night company undercut the bid by $10K... by noticing that procurement had not specified details of service level (that were in the bids we'd gotten and forwarded).  Procurement, once it goes there, is a true black box.  No communication, no understanding.<p>Five months later, we were basically delivered 2 pallets of unassembled parts and no instructions.  Believe me, we spent 3-4x as much in labor as the $10K savings to get it working, and it's been plagued with issues that would have been under the onsite service warranties for the better companies.<p>The biggest irony is: I firmly believe that procurement acts this way not because the government is fundamentally incompetent, but because the Public, and thus Congress, BELIEVES we are incompetent, so puts so many levels of "check" bureaucracy in place that the people who know what they want can't participate directly in getting it.