The principle is that if you prescribe exactly what you want and how you want it, that is the only thing you're going to get. You might not know that six weeks ago, or even six months ago, a Canadian start-up in Cape Breton had a wonderful application that they'd built on a cloud platform that would satisfy all your needs and wants, but they'll look at it and say, “Oh, we can't meet the technical requirements, so we're not going to bid.” They're self-restricting the capacity to engage.
Beyond that, you have SMEs who say, “Look, we don't even look at federal procurement, just because we know it takes this long to engage.” Francis points out that if a procurement is going to go on an 18-month or 24-month cycle or almost three-year cycle, only the very largest vendors can invest.