I don't know about US gov procurement but I do know a bit about European, which I don't think has a particularly better track record.
On these big gov projects you would not believe how terrifyingly thin the margins are for integrators due to politicians being very sensitive about being seen to be responsible with the public purse strings, particularly given that they don't understand the technology. In addition to the thin margins, you therefore also see extensive offshoring and very low blended rates.
The projects are still incredibly expensive in the end and barely perform because the cheap labour incurs massive technical debt - and the thin margins means that the integrators try to insulate their risk with many layers of project management, and huge amounts of rigid enterprise architecture and planning up front.
Given this mentality of cutting cost to the bone via forward planning, even proofs of concept are hard to get through, let alone investing in 15 prototypes. I think the way to do this would be as part of a gov tech investment scheme rather than attached to a specific project or program.
On these big gov projects you would not believe how terrifyingly thin the margins are for integrators due to politicians being very sensitive about being seen to be responsible with the public purse strings, particularly given that they don't understand the technology. In addition to the thin margins, you therefore also see extensive offshoring and very low blended rates.
The projects are still incredibly expensive in the end and barely perform because the cheap labour incurs massive technical debt - and the thin margins means that the integrators try to insulate their risk with many layers of project management, and huge amounts of rigid enterprise architecture and planning up front.
Given this mentality of cutting cost to the bone via forward planning, even proofs of concept are hard to get through, let alone investing in 15 prototypes. I think the way to do this would be as part of a gov tech investment scheme rather than attached to a specific project or program.