[dragonwriter]

> They would need to hire software engineers and, quite frankly, most municipal governments aren't capable of adequately compensating these positions.

Of course they are, because they already are compensating them plus contract management overhead on both sides of the contracting arrangements (which are usually made even greater because they have different contractors for different phases of an effort), plus contractor profits.

Aside from simple corrupt motives (both by responsible managers involved in deals directly and higher-level politicians who favor inefficiency of kicking things off to industry because it buys support from the beneficiaries), this is done because it spreads the blame in the event of failure, which is seen by many involved as more important than maximizing likelihood of success or cost efficiency.

But citizens (well, at least those not corruptly benefitting) shouldn't tolerate that.

[908B64B197]

> Of course they are, because they already are compensating them plus contract management overhead on both sides of the contracting arrangements (which are usually made even greater because they have different contractors for different phases of an effort), plus contractor profits.

They have the budget for it, that's sure. But more often than not the municipal workforce is heavily unionized and has paygrades that are below market rates.

[dragonwriter]

> They have the budget for it, that's sure. But more often than not the municipal workforce is heavily unionized and has paygrades that are below market rates.

That (the below market rates) is part of the setup to promote outsourcing. A heavily unionized workforce doesn't make it harder to for an organization to increase tech role pay to market rates if it wants to, it makes it fight harder to avoid to doing so.