They asked us for ideas. Cost was not a factor. It was, here's our problem, how would you go about dealing with it? We gave them a set of ideas and they picked among the bids. I believe they got three or four people who proposed in response to that, and away we went.
The government's not comfortable with that, and part of the reason is that it requires expertise. It comes back to the earlier point. If you have people in procurement who really are not sure of what they are doing, then they tend to default to ticks and boxes. Does so-and-so have 10 years of experience doing this? Tick. Does he have a degree in this? Tick. Has he done this exact same thing before? It doesn't encourage innovation.