[aries1980]

> Every if you don't develop the system on your own and buy it from a third party (be it T-Systems or someone else), you still need technical expertise to prepare the requirements, evaluate the proposed solution (possibly proposals from multiple vendors) and do then do acceptance testing.

I don't think this is true. When you buy a house, do you have to be able to do the specification and evaluate? This is a good analogy, because T-Systems have delivered similar solutions to other clients, what they needed here is a little bit of tailoring and integration (which is not the part that failed).

[afuchs]

It is common for a typical western government to have domain specialists, working directly for them, to help write the contracts and requirements for their external contractors and vendors.

[geon]

In my experience, clients rarely have any technical expertise at all.