Though government should buy commodity products for commodity functions, when it’s not accounting or payroll but your agency’s mission, the technology needs to be your product. It can’t just be a project that was contracted for, developed, tested, and declared “done.” You need to own the code, and you need to be able to change it to meet your needs. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use contractors at all—in government, you will almost certainly use them. It means that you must have the core competencies to support a living, ever-adapting system.
