Comment by mike_hearn
4 hours ago
Buy: you need expertise in contracts and knowing what you need.
Build: you need expertise in contracts, knowing what you need and also software development.
It's obviously easier to buy than build, especially for civil service roles where they can't attract the best developers due to political/ideological constraints.
The catch is that if you don't know software development, you probably don't know what you need...
>knowing what you need.
But if you have a government department that builds software, they can also spec it. And everyones interests are aligned.
Further you open the door to bell labs/DARPA type speculative work.
Seems to me, the type of work environment where you have that freedom, are able to open source work would be attractive to a lot of people.