It's all about arse covering
Say, for example, that Fujitsu is absolutely brilliant at doing something, like building a particular sort of widget.
(ok, stay with me on this)
That brilliance comes from the people who work for it.
Now, imagine the best of those people leave and start up a new company, to build widgets.
What is the chance of that new company winning a widget-supply bid against Fujitsu, whose best and brightest have just walked out the door?
Zero.
Why? Because procurement cares more about perceived financial risks (e.g. supplier going out of business or getting bought out and losing interest) than it does about all other classes of risk, namely:
- The widgets are crap
- The widgets are late
- The widgets cost a fortune
You might argue that a small supplier going bust and taking expertise with them (e.g. how the widget works) is a very bad thing, because widgets are complex and difficult to understand.
In which case you would see public sector widget projects focusing continuously on managing key man risks, code clarity, documentation standards, and complexity management.
But they don't, because that is "hard". Instead, they pay a large company a large amount of money to build complex, badly documented crap and with the idea that they can withhold payment or sue them when it goes wrong.
Good luck with that.
</rant>