[dijit]

That would indeed be a risk, but the circular logic of this means no new company could ever have any competence outside of its founders. Which feels shortsighted.

Anyway, I am a former sysadmin. I am confident that I can identify competence in the requisite areas.

[criley2]

Governments tend to be far less competent at determining technical competence. Due to a wide variety of factors, governments tend to be completely uncompetitive in salary for technical positions meaning they're already hiring from the lower end of the pool (not including a few altruistic folks willing to forgo their market value).

At a company if a department isn't working out you just restructure and move on, but in the government, that team is going to retire in your org and collect pension from you, and there's very little you can do about that.

[dijit]

Everything you said seems to also apply for developers and the staff that would manage cloud resources.

Lack of cost control or effective use of a cloud provider leads to spiralling uncontrollable costs.