[anthonybsd]

Even after you get in the process doesn't get any easier. A friend of mine is a CTO of a successful software company in D.C. that specializes in government contracts. However multiple agencies do a separate bidding process for the software development phase and for the UAT/QA phase (waterfall ughh). So often when they land a software project, the QA for that project will typically go to their direct competitor. The QA phase frequently gets billed based on time spent (with allowances for overruns specified), and so it's in the interest of the QA company to spend as much time in the process as possible. As you can imagine, this does not yield a very productive QA process. I.e. JIRA tickets for "The last letter on this form title is too curvy" are not uncommon.

[USNetizen]

The government has serious OCI (conflict of interest) concerns so, yeah, QA is almost always a separate contract. However, you forget that the average software development contract is in the millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions. Try to find that level in the commercial/b2b sector. I think you can tolerate a few picky font change requests in exchange for the vastly increased revenue such development opportunities provide overall.

Most agencies are moving more towards Agile now except for their legacy products. (Pro Tip: there is a huge market in app modernization if anyone is interested in learning arcane languages like COBOL and MUMPS). But, yeah, if you can just hold your nose and get through a waterfall methodology, your wallet will thank you.

There is a huge push underway in government to modernize systems and methodologies, so the next decade will be very dynamic for those companies willing to put in the up front investment and time to earn a spot in the market. Don't get me wrong, there isn't the same wartime spending as there once was (which is a good thing for taxpayers and competitive small businesses), but still some incredible, unprecedented opportunity for innovators of all types.