Oh my sweet summer child, thou has not seen the internal working of government contracts.
In order to qualify to even bid on a contract there is a pretty high entry barrier. The amount of time it will take you to cross that barrier would be more than amount of time it will take you to start a real business. Bidding is another expensive process which costs money. If you bid on 10 contracts in a year and win one the cost of bidding on rest 9 contracts must be covered to the won contract.
Then comes the compliance costs of various government regulations. In a startup world you can take up accessibility as a P2 item but in government contracts it is a P0. So there are all these complexities involved which bloat the contract. Government has passed probably thousand regulations on whom you can hire and how you work, where the data is stored and what kind of background verification you have done on your employees.
Of course if you and I were to develop a similar website we could do it for $4M and spare some cash to buy couple of Ferraris.
PS. There is also bribes. Of course these are never called so but you have to spend good amount of time golfing with right people, throwing parties, offering front row seats to NBA finals and those sort of things to get your files moving.
In order to qualify to even bid on a contract there is a pretty high entry barrier. The amount of time it will take you to cross that barrier would be more than amount of time it will take you to start a real business. Bidding is another expensive process which costs money. If you bid on 10 contracts in a year and win one the cost of bidding on rest 9 contracts must be covered to the won contract.
Then comes the compliance costs of various government regulations. In a startup world you can take up accessibility as a P2 item but in government contracts it is a P0. So there are all these complexities involved which bloat the contract. Government has passed probably thousand regulations on whom you can hire and how you work, where the data is stored and what kind of background verification you have done on your employees.
Of course if you and I were to develop a similar website we could do it for $4M and spare some cash to buy couple of Ferraris.
PS. There is also bribes. Of course these are never called so but you have to spend good amount of time golfing with right people, throwing parties, offering front row seats to NBA finals and those sort of things to get your files moving.